#i come from the era of rpf where you could not start out with a rarepair. you were [big ship shipper] first

[crosbyism]

Iirc sidgeno isn't your area of expertise but I just read "like a flashback" by ibear and thought of your current Sid masculinity kink musings. Basically it's a "what if Sid's gay awakening was shitty 70s porn and now he likes shitty mustaches a bit too much"

anon i know you did not intend to be, but this ask is hilarious. reading “isn’t your area of expertise” was like getting suplexed by a professional wrestler. i’m losing it. my baby. my baby girl. my baby boy. my baby baby. however your gender babies. i got my hrpf fandom undergrad in sidgeno. i was in the trenches. i’ve written sidgeno. for the exchange, even. i’ve read almost the entire sidgeno tag top to bottom. this is like telling steve yzerman “i know you don’t know much about wayne gretzky, having been on the red wings”. i’m crying

however i love that apparently it’s not clear that i’m a fandom old. this is so funny. imagine saying this to someone who’s been on hockeyblr and specifically pensblr for almost a decade. i was reading sidgeno before tk/nolpat existed. god. wow

sorry, sorry, to get back to your actual question. yes i’ve read iBear. was very into iBear for a while. it’s a fun fic. it’s definitely been a while since i’ve read it, wasn’t on my mind when the topic came up in my asks, but it’s very fitting for the recent masc kink discussions on this blog for sure (the characterisations aren’t really my jam any more, but tbf that was in the spacetoaster era of sidgeno). my iBear favourites were actually The State of Marriage and I Like The Way I Smell On You, (aside from a very specific one which was orphaned, iykyk, i’ve just been around long enough to remember when it wasn’t. lol), which i recommend reading if you haven’t yet and you’re in the process of reading your way through their catalogue

[brandogenius]

i hope you all forgive me for the inactivity the last few days!! i’ve been writing this and a few others but dedicating more time to this!

it’s one of the longest pieces i’ve written so far! lemme know if you enjoyed this :D

‼️RPF‼️

"first day of tour"

the boys & younger!artist reader!

(not proofread!!)

Part 1 here!

word count: 6,591.

7:05am.

your phone shined back at you. 7:06am. the sound of someone’s phone alarm rang throughout the bunk. the sound of the bus tires rolling over stones and pebbles made you quickly remember where you are.

you sighed, rolling over so you were facing the small curtain. your ears twitched to the small sound of shuffling coming from one of the bunks. the alarm was turned off. you could hear the sound of ruffling, curtains being pulled and feet pattering against the wood on the ground. the shower was turned on and off.

it went in and out like a blur for you. in and out of sleep. it kinda made you feel anxious. you were normally someone who liked to sleep in late. two days ago you were sleeping in late while recovering from the cold you got from somewhere. the boys being kind enough to let you sleep in until afternoon claiming “you need rest to restore your energy before tour” being up early before the sun even started to rise made you a little worried.

it was more for the thought of having to adapt to this new lifestyle for the couple months you share with the band you’re opening for. waking up, getting breakfast and preparing for a jam packed filled day of soundcheck, preparing for the show and actually doing the show.

you let your mind ramble for a couple moments. physically you’re on a tour bus in a new city, ready to sing in front of thousands of people. but mentally, you’re in your bedroom, trying to come up with ways to skip class. to not show up to school. to turn off your alarm and roll over, getting those couple extra hours of sleep. thankful you don’t need to face the people who make your life a living hell.

unfortunately this isn’t the case. you cannot afford to let your anxious mind ramble and convince yourself to stay off school. you have a job, an important job to do. an exciting new adventure - a new era to unlock. this was going to be fun, it was going to be-

“good morning” a soft knock to the side of your bunk startled you from your thoughts. a familiar soft voice rung through the room.

you stayed quiet for a moment before you heard your name being called. you bummed out, fingers pulling back the curtain. there stood in front of you was lucy. she was still

dressed in her pyjamas. she leaned down slightly, phone in her hand.

“it’s time to wake up, kid. i got you up a little bit earlier than the boys so you have time to prepare. we should be stopping at the venue in an hour. giving you time to have first dibs in the shower. i’ll be making some cereal if you want any” lucy smiled down at you. she looked tired.

“thanks” you sighed, flopping your head back down on the pillow.

“trust me, you’ll get used to the early mornings. did you sleep well?” lucy turned her back to you, her voice was low, whispering almost as to not wake up the other two. her bunk was directly across from yours. she started to fix the blankets, folding them neatly

“you could say that” you pushed the duvet off you, feet hitting the cold ground. “better than when i was sick so i guess you could say it was good”

“well that’s good. knew you’d be better before the first show. alright, you go have a shower, i’ll prepare some coffee and wake up the other two” lucy gave you a small smile, walking out of the bunk room, closing the door quietly. you stood in the middle of the room. the only sounds that could be heard was the small sounds of snores from the other two and the small faint sound of the coffee machine behind used.

making your way to the door, you slide it slowly, eager to not make a sound. the bathroom was pretty big. nothing too special. a toilet with a sink and a shower. you spent about 20 minutes in the shower, trying to fully wake up. the warm water feeling like a warm safe blanket around you. it helped your anxiety a bit.

what made you anxious you didn’t know. maybe it was the anxiety of getting up early. the feeling and memories of highschool filling your brain. the same routine of getting up, showing, eating and leaving. except, this time it was different.

your thoughts were yet again, interrupted by a knock on the door.

“spare some hot water for the poor unfortunate souls” you quickly turned off the shower, drying yourself off.

“sorry- i’ll be out in a second!” you called back. the voice behind the door chuckled.

“i’m just joking, take your time- actually don’t - i need to use the bathroom” phoebes voice rang through the room. you quickly got dressed into a hoodie and sweatpants. something cosy to last throughout soundcheck

you opened the door to the bathroom phoebe was standing against the wall, phone and towel in her hand.

“no need to rush- jesus christ it’s all ok” she reassured you.

“i know, just didn’t wanna keep you waiting” you called back, sliding the door open to the bunk room. you made your way to your bunk, grabbing your phone and heading out into the open area lounge.

julien took her spot on the couch, phone on the table propped up on a book as it played some random youtube video. lucy was stirring some sugar into a cup.

“mornin’. did phoebe scare you?” julien greeted you. lucy placed two cups of coffee on the table, placing a third cup for herself across from you.

“someday i will put salt in her coffee. call it payback for the amount of times she does that” lucy added, taking a sip from her mug.

“she does that often?” you questioned, hands wrapped around the mug. the stinging sensation of the hot coffee was grounding you slightly.

“all the time, kid. would start banging on the door like a crazy person to scare us. consider yourself lucky she didn’t start screaming like the banshee” julien joked lightheartedly. you pulled your legs onto the couch, eyes defying to the video julien was watching.

“we got a jam packed day ahead of us. first show of the tour, excited?” lucy asked you. of course you were excited. you were just nervous.

you nodded your head, taking a sip of the coffee. it wasn’t something you usually prefer. you were more of an iced coffee person but you wouldn’t complain. lucy went out of her way to make coffee for you. the least you can do is drink it.

“did you make coffee” all heads turn to the silver haired woman who made her way to the couch. “it’s ok the counter”

“sweet” phoebe took the mug, sitting in julien’s place, the tattooed girl getting up to go use the shower.

“ say, if everything goes to plan. quick soundcheck then we can go get some lunch after. sound good?” phoebe proposed the idea.

“i like it” you replied with a smile. it’d be nice to go out and have lunch with the boys. considering the fact you weren’t able to join them two days ago, it’d be nice to have some food with them.

“hell yeah. i was researching some places in the city. there’s a nice little cafe not too far from the venue. i can pull up the website, see if they have a kids menu” phoebe teased. lucy giggled into her mug, watching the way you stared at phoebe

“that was just mean. i hope you get a senior citizen discount” lucy snorts into her coffee mug, letting out a loud laugh. phoebe gasped, her hand holding her heart in mock offence.

“i may have silver hair, but that was just too far man. not cool” phoebe pretended to wipe fake tears from her eyes. lucy reached her hand out for a high five. “that made my morning - no, my entire week. you bet i’m going to share this story during the show”

“you better not” phoebe flipped lucy off.

“i don’t know what’s goin’ on, but i agree with lucy” juliens voice popped up, coming out of the shower and sitting on the edge of the seat beside you.

“they just called me old!” phoebe pointed a finger at you. you shrugged in return, sipping on your coffee. “did i lie?”

“i agree. you’re also older than all of us here so.. they aren’t wrong” julien smirked over at

phoebe.

“oh fuck you guys”

you heard the bus stop, glancing around as the boys, they seemed to know what’s up.

“seems like we’re at the venue. right, let’s go” lucy took the mugs, settling them into the sink. the small bit of anxiety started to creep back into your chest again. the mixture of excitement and worry weighing the pros and cons down.

8:20am

you checked your phone. time went by quicker than you thought. you got up from your seat and followed julien to the door. she was already outside. the cold crisp air hit your face making you shiver a bit. the sun has risen. the sun shining down on top of your head making you squint. it was a nice feeling. the birds were chirping loudly all around you.

the bus was parked in the venue bus park. thankfully there was nobody queuing up around here. you and the boys would be able to get in and out without any hassle.

it was a bit familiar to you. growing up, you were someone who enjoyed going to concerts. queuing up hours on end to see your favourite bands. being in the position of the musicians you loved when you were younger was weird.

“you alright?” julien stood in front of you, lifting her guitar out of the storage unit. she started to take out most of the equipment, settling them onto the floor.

“i’m good- haven’t seen the outside in a while” you shook your head, taking your guitar case from julien and settling it beside the bus. you helped take out some boxes and suitcases, leading them over to the venue doors.

“ you would’ve been out with us if you weren’t sick, kid. thankfully if all goes well, we can go out for lunch so that’s good” julien was right beside you, arms full with baggage. the two of you walked through the open doors and down the hallway. staff members belonging to the venue were quick

to help. taking the boxes and equipment from your hands and guide you to the dressing room.

you and julien make your way into the big room. snacks and drinks were displayed out for you all. you opted to sit on the couch, calming the inner turmoil wrecking through your head.

“can head those thoughts a mile away” you looked up to see julien staring at you. “first soundcheck. im nervous - what if it doesn’t go right?”

“hey-“ julien put down the snacks and walked over to you, crouching down to meet your eyes. “i think you’ll do great. don’t put yourself down like that, kid. alright? you’re a talented musician. i think you’ll ace this” she reassured. you tried to believe her words.

“i just.. worry. constant state of anxiety. first night of the tour and i want it to go good..” you trailed off, shrugging slightly. you stare at the ground.

“i understand, really.” juliens voice was soft. she placed a band on your shoulder, sitting down beside you. “the first night is always scary. trust me when i tell you it gets easier from then onwards. when you develop this routine of waking up, soundcheck, preforming they same songs every night, it gets easier and more familiar. it’ll come to you naturally”

you listened to the older woman talk. she had a way with words. the way she was able to intelligently put her words together like a poem amazed you.

“thanks” you leaned your head back on the couch with a sigh. julien patted your thigh as she stood up. “i’ll go find the boys, you alright on your own? i think i habe soundcheck now so if you wanna come check it out? you’ll be on after us anyway”

you took the invitation, following julien out to meet with the rest of the band. lucy and phoebe were on the stand, crew members standing all around them. phoebe seemed to notice the two of you first.

“where the hell did you guys go?”

“we ended up being shown to the dressing room. they are staying to watch soundcheck” julien walks out on stage, pointing a finger back at you.

you watched as the crew worked quickly to mic the boys up. placing the wires carefully on their backs and handing them the in ears. it was all new to you. a couple of years ago, you’d be outside queuing in line to see your favourite band while they did soundcheck. this is what happens during it huh?

it was interesting. witnessing the boys play around with songs on the setlist and ones that didn’t make the setlist. running about and tuning their guitars. redoing the intros if they didn’t get it right. the behind the scenes of it all intrigued you a lot. it was something you never got to see much in general. being able to watch what happens when getting ready for a show was fun.

“kid, you’re up next”

“huh?” you glanced over at phoebe. she skips over to you, in ears in hand. “have you done these before?” she passed them to you. you looked at them in your hand for a moment.

“no.”

“that’s fine” phoebe took back the in ears, setting up the monitors, clipping them to the back of your hoodie. “i’ve done it so many times i can do it with my eyes closed. if you ever need help just scream and i’ll be summoned” she reassured.

“i’m pretty sure all you gotta do now is just

shove them in your ears and you’ll be able to hear the instrumental queues and shit” phoebe took one of the ear buds, placing it over your ear and clipping it to the monitor behind your back. a crew member came over, passing your previous guitar to you.

“dude no way- that’s a sick fucking guitar. gretsch right?” phoebe gushed over your guitar. you slung the strap over your head, holding it close as you nodded your head.

“g6136t 1959 white falcon. my prized possession” you held onto the neck of the guitar, strumming a few simple cords. phoebe was stunned for a moment.

“it’s sick. i love it. you’ll need to let me play something on it later. that is a threat”

“you can later. if you buy me lunch” you held your hand out for phoebe to shake. she nodded her head. shaking your hand firmly.

“a deal. now go out there and have fun kid” phoebe gave you a quick shove, pushing you towards the front of the stage where the x was located on the ground. it was a bit intimidating. the venue was massive. a lot of people would be here, watching you sing live. phone cameras held up towards you. all eyes would be on you. you took a deep breath and started to strum the first cords to your opening song.

-

“fucking banger after banger! i love it”. you quickly got off the stage, phoebe praised you as she helped unclip the wires from your back.

“it wasn’t that good”

“you need confidence in yourself. you won’t get anywhere in life if you aren’t confident in yourself kid. you did good and i can confirm- i don’t lie” phoebe wrapped the leads up, passing them to the nearby crew. you settled your guitar in the stand slot by the stage. it’ll stay there for now until the show.

“so, are we thinking lunch?” phoebe questioned. she was on her phone, typing away quickly.

“we can do lunch, yeah. whenever you want to go.” you replied, following the older woman like a lost puppy as she walked down the hall.

“we’re gonna be meeting lucy and jb at this cool cafe we were at before. i think youll like it. it’s like.. five minutes away from here.” phoebe clicked on google maps

you checked the time on your phone, surprised as the numbers stared back at you.

10:45am.

the two of you walked out of the venue through the back door. the sun was up in the sky now, warm and bright. phoebe shoved some sunglasses on her face. it was the middle of july, you’re favourite month by far. when the sun would shine bright in the morning and last for longer in the evening.

“have you been here before?” phoebe turned back to look at you. sunglasses now raised on her head. she was looking around the entrance of the venue. “we may need to pass the front entrance. you’re cool with that right?”

“yeah- that’s fine by me. no haven’t been here before. i don’t think i’ve been to many places other than my home town. so, this is new.” phoebe took the lead. walking side by side, the two of you passed the front entrance, a few fans waving to both of you as you quickly walked along, catching up to phoebe.

“it’s a nice place. i was here for my last tour. didn’t get to go to this cafe, though. it was on my list of places to try” the two of you made your way down the street, passing the small shops on your way, mentally taking note of the stores you want to visit after lunch.

the cafe was around the corner. seats planted outside with umbrellas in the middle of the tables. plants and flowers were scattered along the ground. it had a cosy atmosphere to it. phoebe pushed the door open, you trailing behind her.

the smell of coffee beans hit your nose strong. the loud sound of the coffee machine could be heard faintly with a buzz of chattering from various corners of the building.

“what do you want?” phoebe stared at the menu behind the cashier. “honestly, feeling like some iced coffee right now” she added.

“maybe an iced coffee too. whatever you’re having” you smiled back.

you could tell why the boys wanted to go here. it was buzzing with life. soft lofi music playing in the background from a phone connected to a cable. the baristas were even nicer. phoebe ordering two iced lattes, both with vanilla. you scanned around the cafe, pinpointing julien and lucy in the corner, lucy on her phone, back turned to you and julien staring over. you waved and julien gave a thumbs up.

“i got you vanilla. i feel like you’re a vanilla iced latte type of person. if not, then you’re boring and i’m ending this friendship ” phoebe handed you the iced coffee and trailed down to the corner of the cafe.

“it’s my favourite so that’s good” you took a seat beside julien, phoebe sitting across from you, beside lucy.

“thought you guys got lost. soundcheck go well?” julien commented. eyes fixated on the menu in front of her, scanning through the items. you picked up a spare menu, sliding the other two towards lucy and phoebe.

“it was good” you nodded, eyes going down the list of sandwiches. “first time, was scary but it went good thankfully”

“had to help clip on the monitor and ears” phoebe put down the menu, seeming to already decide on what she wanted.

“in fairness, it is tricky. especially for the first time” lucy added with a nod. “i’m glad it went well, kid. i’m excited to see you preform tonight” the barista came over, taking everyone’s orders.

“we’ll have to celebrate tonight. first show of the tour” everyone looked over at phoebe. she was playing some sort of mobile app on her game

“like what? pizza?” you questioned. phoebe looked up from her phone. “could be nice yeah. i was thinking maybe to a bar?”

“you do realise they aren’t twenty one yet right?” lucy gave phoebe a look. “we aren’t bringing someone underage to a bar. we can just do something on the bus”

the barista comes back with four plates filled with sandwiches, handing them to each one of you. you thanked the woman with a small smile.

you listened to the boys discuss god knows what. hopping from topic to topic. talking about future projects, favourite places they want to visit on tour and more. you zoned out a bit, thoughts loud in your head as you took a bite of your sandwich.

feeling a small tap on your shoulder, you look over at julien who nods towards phoebe.

“you ok? just been a little quiet” lucy and phoebe were staring at you. it made you feel a little anxious.

“no- no i’m fine! i just.. zone out while eating?” you say, more as a question than an answer. it was true. you were one who liked to listen to conversations and add to them when feeling necessary. listening to the boys ramble about what type of cat breed each would be was something that entertained you a lot.

“anyway- i think you’d be a rag doll” phoebe went back to her ramble, pointing a finger at you. “i have no explanation why but it fits”

“i can see it. or a calico” lucy added, scanning over you like she was trying to analyse you. you let the two go back into a discussion. you and julien watching amused as the two in front of you have a debate whether or not julien is in fact a siamese.

“i’d love to let y’all continue this debate but we need to get going” julien tapped the watch on her phone.

12:10pm.

time was going by insanely fast. it had you a bit surprised. stepping out of the booth, you let julien slip out, going to pay for everyone’s food. you followed lucy and phoebe outside the cafe, sitting down with lucy on one of the small chairs by the window.

“it’s a lovely day out today” phoebe commented, one hand on her hip, the other over her eyes as she looked around. “welcome to los angeles” lucy chuckled, placing her sun glasses on her face.

“mhm. if the weather is like this for the tour, im fucking ready to play shows with open roofs. can you imagine how warm it’d be?” phoebe turned around to face the two of you. she was about to say more when julien shoved the door open, tucking the receipt into her back pocket.

“let’s get going. cmon” she took the lead, walking ahead. you and lucy walked together as phoebe took off in a skip.

“so how’s the first few hours been?” lucy asked, slinging her totebag to the other shoulder. you could see the outline of two books. it explained why she was gone a bit earlier.

“very new. i like stopping in new places and getting to explore more of the town. did you go shopping?” you questioned.

lucy nodded her head, excitedly. she took out two books from her bag. “me and jb went to this bookstore just after soundcheck. seen these two- haven’t read them before but they sound interesting. do you read?”

“sometimes? it’s kinda hard to read words on a page.. as say online”

“ that’s totally fair. if you ever wanna take a look at these you can! i have a few on the bus if you ever want any” you thank lucy, helping her put the books back into the totebag.

julien and phoebe were a little bit ahead. stopped by two people you can only recognise as fans. julien is waving to you and lucy, trying to bring you two over. you both pick up your pace, watching as the two girls eyes widen even more upon noticing you both come over.

“we can do one big group photo if that’s ok? we’re on a bit of a time schedule and have to get back to the venue” julien voiced out. the two fans were quick to agree. lucy grabbed your arm and brought you close to her. sandwiched in between phoebe and lucy. julien was to your left. the two girls in front of you, phone held up for a selfie.

“thank you so much-“ one of them says, excitedly. the other girl was quickly taking bracelets off her arm, passing them out to you and the boys.

“these are awesome man, did you make them?” julien gasped, putting the bracelet on her wrist, showing it off. the bracelet given to you was a title from your debut album. you quickly put it on your wrist and gave the two girls a big smile.

“we made them in the queue today. been in line since four this morning. wanted to get some lunch and go back to queuing but somehow seen you all.“ one of the girls bounced on her toes excitedly. it made you almost feel like crying. obviously in a good way. they were meeting their idols and were excited. you remembered feeling like that when you were younger. making friends in the lines for soundcheck and general admission.

“we’ve been really big fans of you since your first album came out- so it’s a bit of a surprise and honourable moment to have met you” it took you a small moment to realise the two girls were talking directly to you. your eyes widened in surprise.

“really?- god that was like - when i was eighteen.. holy shit- wow” you laughed. you felt phoebe pat your back “we got a couple of ogs here”

“we’ll let you guys go back to the venue. don’t want to keep you waiting any longer!“ the two girls in front of you were already saying their goodbyes. julien has started to already take off, lucy behind her. you gave the two girls a wave and said your goodbyes.

“that was so fucking sweet” phoebe had an arm wrapped around your shoulder, looking at her yellow beaded bracelet. you felt excitement buzz in your stomach and chest.

“my first time meeting fans of my music. i’m still processing it- it’s crazy”

“you better get used to it kid. it’ll be happening a lot more now”

the four of you managed to sneak back into the venue without being spotted. of course it was circling on twitter, the photo the two fans took. proudly posting the photo onto the social media app. fan accounts and update accounts were reposting it. everyone was excited and ready for the concert tonight.

you found yourself situated backstage in the dressing room. sitting in the couch with your legs propped up on the small coffee table, you scrolled through twitter, reading tweets of fans excited for the show, fans commenting how cool you looked in the photos.

it was a bit unusual for you to get this type of attention. of course, you were a known musician on social media since you were eighteen. this was the first time you were ever seen outside, photographed by fans, seen outside. other than the photos you posted on instagram, selfies and photo dumps, memes and photos of your cats from your parents house. this was a new era for you and your fans.

an era to see you finally preform your songs to an audience. the events of 2020 hit a couple years ago, having released your debut album during the midst of the quarantine where you didn’t have to worry about what others thought about your music face to face. it felt a bit more easier for you to click publish and post the songs onto spotify and youtube. knowing you didn’t need to wake up early the next day for school.

you gained a lot of attraction in such short amount of time. when everyone was spending their days online and working from home. it meant opening their minds to new music pallets. your album charted number one in multiple countries, featuring in multiple playlists. tv shows we’re reaching out to you, asking for an opportunity to virtually do an interview with you.

it was scary but exciting. pre recording a live video of you singing in your bedroom to send to the late night shows, having to wake up early the next day for your math zoom meeting.

this would’ve been your first time preforming those songs again. but to a live audience.

“-ah?” you blinked, looking up at julien who somehow was stood in front of you.

“huh?”

“i said are you ready? you gotta get your makeup done. it’s nearly showtime. doors are gonna be opening in… i think an hour?”

an hour? you quickly pressed the button on the side of your phone and glanced at the time.

4:30pm

“shit” you stood up abruptly. times going by too quick for comfort. julien placed a hand on your shoulder, a comforting and reassuring look in her eyes

“listen kid. you’re gonna do great. trust me. i get you may be a bit worried or nervous. don’t be. we’ll be here. you’ll rock the stage” she patted you on the back and shoved you out the door to the main lounge. phoebe and lucy were in the small chairs, getting their makeup and hair done. the stylist guides you to the chair. you end up zoning out, lost in thought while you let the stylish work. you thought over the songs and the cords.

what if you couldn’t remember the cords on your guitar or missed a couple? what if your mic doesn’t work? all these thoughts entered your head as you felt the small bit of anxiety creep up on you again.

as the stylised finished, you got up from the chair and walked back into the dressing room. moving on autopilot, you grabbed your stage outfit. a skirt with fishnets and docs along with a crop top . was this good? did it look ugly. there was no way to change it not, you were running low on time. shops would be closing by this time so you would have to make do.

you shakily got changed, careful to not ruin your makeup or hair. it was just you in the dressing room thankfully. as much as you appreciate the boys, you didn’t want them to see you like this. scared and nervous, unable to form a proper sentence without bursting into tears.

a knock on the door made you jump. an unfamiliar voice was behind the door, announcing 20 minutes until show time. probably one of the crew members. you walked over to the door, holding onto the handle for a moment before shoving it open.

your docs click against the marbled ground as you make your way down the hallway to the stage entrance. it was quite easy to follow thankfully, with signs in big black bold writing, indicating every turn to where the nearest side of the stage is.

you made it to the left side of the stage. crew members and the boys were all huddled together. lucy looked up and met your eyes, grinning widely and running over to you.

“you look amazing!” the boys took turns in complimenting you, phoebe making you do a twirl as she whistles. “are you excited?” she asked. you noticed she was holding your guitar, she passed it to julien as she took something from the crew member. it was the in ears and monitors.

“phoebe is taking the role of tour crew i see” julien teased, holding your guitar by the neck. phoebe clipped the monitor behind your back, linking it up to your in ear monitors and connecting them to the guitar in julien’s hand. “i’ve been touring for a long time man, it comes naturally to me”

she shoved one of the ear buds in your ear, fitting the other. your hands were shaking with a cold sweat, each second that phoebe helped you set up was a countdown to the first performance in front of a crowd.

“seems to be all done. perfect. when you win a grammy, you better mention me and the time i helped you with this” phoebe joked lightheartedly. julien passed the guitar back to you. you slung it over your shoulder. the familiar white and gold on the guitar made you feel a little calmer. you knew how the guitar sounded. this was your main instrument. nothing could go wrong.

“five minutes” a crew member passed by quickly, clipboard in their hand.

6:25pm.

you took deep breaths. the beat of your heart was the only thing you can hear right now. the faint voices of the boys were muffled.

“you got this kid. give it your all” you didn’t even realise you had your eyes closed. opening them up to meet the three women in front of you.

“i got this yes- i fucking do” you tried to hype yourself up. you could hear the cheering and a screaming get louder as the intros start playing.

you gripped your guitar tightly and took off, running out in stage.

—

7:30pm.

“HOLY SHIT LETS FUCKING GO” the minute you stepped foot off stage you were bombarded with three pairs of arms around you.

“KID- THAT WAS AWESOME” julien had her arms on your shoulders, shaking you aggressively as she jumped around. you let a sigh of relief wash over you. the anxiety was long gone. replaced with the excitement of preforming. everything went fine. it was perfect. it was the best show you’ve ever done.

“your first show, how do you feel!” lucy slung an arm over your shoulder, all of you walking back to the dressing room. the boys had 30 minutes before they were expected to go on stage.

“i’m fucking tired” you sighed, dropping down onto the couch.

“you can stay here or watch us backstage whatever you prefer. phoebe sat down beside you, grabbing your legs and resting them on her lap.

“just give me like.. an hour to recover and i’ll be fine” you said half jokingly. you needed a minute to recover from the adrenaline.

“listen, we’ll be back at the entrance we were when you were going on stage. if you wanna meet us there you can, if not don’t worry about it” phoebe got back up again, ready to head back out.

you were left in the dressing room alone. opening your phone, you took to twitter. most of the tweets you came across were all positive things. fans excited to see you preform and talking and crying over your setlist. it was a positive outcome.

you sat on twitter for a couple of more minutes. the boys were just starting their opening song. you promised to come watch soon. getting up, you changed into some more comfier clothes. shorts and an oversized tshirt. you nearly folded your stage clothes, putting them away in the suitcase that was open on the ground, shoved up against the wall.

you made your way back the same way you went earlier. following the sighs on the wall, you made your way to the side of the stage. lucy was closest to you, you watched as the boys preformed true blue.

taking a seat on one of the benches, you sat and listed. occasionally taking videos of some of the songs. the boys were talented amazing musicians. lighting the venue up with their stage presence as they ran and jumped around on stage. belted out song lyrics and high notes. talked and joked with the audience.

as someone who would normally be in the pit where everyone else is, sitting behind the stage was something you enjoyed. it was new and exciting.

you watched as the boys took their last bow and ran off stage. they seemed to be full of excitement and adrenaline.

“first night down, boys! lets go!” phoebe cheered. she quickly untangled herself from the guitar and wires, handing them to the staff and crew surrounding each one of you.

“you guys were amazing. probably one of the best shows i’ve seen in my entire life” you complimented. each of them seemed thankful and honoured.

“we need to get our shit together and go back on the bus. are we still up for pizza? i know it’s late” lucy questioned, the four of you all walking back into the dressing room. you opted for your usual spot on the couch as julien went into the bathroom first to change.

“pizza works fine by me. have it delivered to the bus before we take off” you nodded, opening your phone, clicking on one of the small mobile apps you downloaded for the tour bus journey.

“good idea, very smart” phoebe nodded, opening a packet of gummies. julien stepped out in some jeans and a hoodie. it was phoebes turn to use the bathroom.

“also wanna take an early night too. that means no staying up ‘till 4am” julien gave phoebe, making way for her to enter the bathroom. the silver haired woman stuck out her tongue, shutting the bathroom door closed.

“i think 12 or 1am is a suitable time for us to sleep on tour” lucy said from the corner. she was zipping up her suitcase. “1:30 at latest”

you couldn’t argue with that. the events of today wore you down. you didn’t even know if you’d survive until 1:30.

phoebe opened the bathroom door, coming out in one of lucy’s hoodies and shorts. she quickly walked over to her own suitcase. packing the stage clothes into the smaller compartment of her bag. lucy was the last in the bathroom.

“when luce is out we can leave. i can order the pizza now? so it’s quicker” julien stood up with a sigh, cracking her back.

“sounds good, you know our usual” phoebe snapped her head over to you, pointing a finger.

“what type of pizza do you like? if you say pineapple on pizza i will kick you from this tour”

you raised an eyebrow and squinted your eyes. “what’s wrong with pineapple on pizza?” this made phoebe groan as julien chuckled to herself.

“this is uncalled for. i’m calling the tour manager immediately- give me my phone!” phoebe dramatically sighed.

“this is homophobic” you commented, a small smirk on your face. phoebes eyes widen as she gasps

“HOW IS THAT HOMOPHOBIC-“ julien bursts out laughing at phoebes outburst. lucy was stood at the door frozen, having walked in on this conversation.

“this is a homophobic target towards me and my like for pineapple on pizza” you joked, feeling yourself become a little bit more comfortable around the boys. phoebe snaps her head towards lucy, waving her arms around. “DO YOU SEE THIS SHIT?”

“i don’t know.. i kinda agree with them on this one”

“HOW DARE YOU-“

you sat back on the couch, trying to wipe the small tears from your eyes as you laughed harder.

maybe this tour won’t be as bad after all.

that is if phoebe doesn’t kick you off early for ordering pineapple and ham pizza.

[avida-heidia-5]

Wheeeeeeeeee thanks for the tag @magdacimy!!!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰

Who is your favourite driver?

Cute. Sexy. Mischievous. Clever. Kind-hearted. Generous. Selfless. Babygirliest of all babygirls. He’s the loveliest human being on the planet, really.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, thee one and only…

*drum roll*

Karun Chandhok!

Wait, no. Hang on. That can’t be right. Where have all my notes gone?

Ah, here they are! *ahem*

Ladies and gentlemen, my favourite F1 driver of all time isssssss…

*drum roll*

✨ Sebastian Vettel! ✨

Wooo, big surprise! Who could’ve seen that coming? I’m so predictable! 😂

Do you have other favourite drivers?

Why, yes I do! In no order in particular, I love Kimi Räikkönen, Charles Leclerc, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Mark Webber, Mika Häkkinen, Alex Albon, Ollie Bearman, Daniel Ricciardo, Oscar Piastri, Esteban Ocon, Giancarlo Fisichella, Esteban Gutiérrez, and Carlos Sainz Jr..

I haven’t watched any races from the classic era yet (By that, I mean the 50’s all the way up to the mid-90’s), so I can’t list any classic F1 drivers. There will be one out very soon though when I get around to it. 😉

Who is your least favourite driver?

Max V, Checo Pérez, Pierre Gasly, Felipe Massa, and Nelson Piquet are ones that spring to mind. Put simply, they’re all horrid people. Except Gasly (as far as I know), who I ultimately don’t care that much about.

Do you pull for drivers or do you like teams as well?

My heart will always go towards the drivers I love or drivers I want to see do well, no matter which team they drive for.

If you like teams which teams do you pull for?

We’re primarily a McLaren household, but we’re happy to support any team that happens to be at the top of the standings. The odd Ferrari. The odd Aston Martin. You know how it is.

How long have you been into F1?

Oooooh since around 2004-2005, I think. I don’t know the exact moment when it all started, but I vividly remember my interest in the sport reaching its peak when I watched the 2005 season live on the telly, specifically the Japanese GP when my boy Kimi Räikkönen started from dead last on the grid to overtaking Giancarlo Fisichella on the final lap to take 1st place. What a race that was! 😍😍😍 To this day, my love for F1 has never waned, even when there were some bad or tedious races here and there.

What got you into F1?

My parents! They introduced it to me when I was 4 or 5 years old.

Do you enjoy fic/rpf?

Uuuuhhhh…

*rapidly closes numerous AO3 tabs*

Noooooooo don’t be silly! As if I would ever read that stuff. Mm mmm. Not me. Heh heh.

How do you view new fans?

I’m a bit mixed. I’m torn between excitement and annoyance depending on where their interest in the sport stems from.

If you could take over as team principal for any team, who would it be and why?

I’d steal the Williams spreadsheet and make that team great again like it’s the 1990’s! I feel really bad for James Vowles and some of the drivers.

Are your friends and family into F1?

My parents, obviously! My sister has recently started watching it too. (She’s a huge Lando Norris fan and a McLaren supporter!) My grandparents on my dad’s side don’t watch it as much but they are known to watch it from time to time when nothing’s on. My grandpa on my mum’s side watches it on occasion but he would rather watch the rugby instead. 😂

My friends in real life don’t watch F1 sadly, so I can’t have any conversations about it. 😢 However, I have some lovely friends on Discord who watch and ramble on about F1. I love being around those people as I can talk freely and comfortably about things related to it with hardly any problems. I would really love to meet those people in real life too. 🥰🥰🥰

Are you open to talking to other fans/making friends?

HELL YEAH, I AM!!!! I’m always looking forward to making some friends with F1 fans.

Tagging @racingliners, @vroomjohnwatson, @kaossbells, @lottie1824, @zoomguanyu, @pumpkinnning, @wanderingblindly, @miss-malheur, @msmirrorball21, and whoever sees this that hasn’t been tagged but wants to do this. Feel free to ignore this post if you’ve done this already, that’s completely fine. 💙

[thirdset]

cannot even say wta is in its straight era because technically it is not but the vibes are so weird. not necessarily bad. but weird. i think it's because there is no balance. what do i mean by that? i don't even know. am i rewriting history in my head? maybe. i think the "old era" of like...serena/maria/caro/angie/aga/ana/vika were so...not necessarily messy but so different? the rotations were better somehow. you could group them together easily and they played each other more often.

but now i feel like im lying!!! like aryna/iga, aryna/elena, elena/iga in theory have a similar sort of dynamic that can translate from on court to off but i cannot make it work...coco's rotational abilities are interesting to me because there is potential. i think jess is so....straight married boring and maria fell off the face of the earth. even tho i still think they're fun mirrors of each other meaning...it's a flop fest. you understand me etc. iga is just like....you can't even have messy (fake!!!!!) fun with her psychologist or whatever. that video of her inviting jasmine over for pierogies for CHRISTMAS like girl...i was thinking. and then NAOMI who i thought was the centre of the wta universe is like...where are you? iga/naomi is still interesting to me but their lives SEEM so opposite that i find it hard to like. just ignore the fact that naomi has an entire baby. even tho rpf is FAKE fake fake. and just using them as pre-tense for stories. like i get that i am not really a tinhatter in any sense of it. but idk. i think that's part of why m/m rpf is more popular because it's like. easier to forget about the rest of their lives where with women it is still so much more centred? idk. maybe i've lost my marbles. who else even is there. i know i wrote a dreamwidth post with all my potential pairings i'd write but...that is under lock and key. aryna is def, imo, the most rotatable because she is the most extroverted and in everyone else's business. i thought emma had so much potential but now i'm like...mhm. karo is like. ok dyke but also ? mhm. doubles is so...i could make it work but the effort vs. reward of writing it stresses me out too much. bianca is my favourite "no homo" "im not lesbian just to clear that up" remix but she's so isolated from the tour that it's hard to make it work. absolutely NOBODY cared about emma/bianca even though i still think it works and is interesting. jannik/carlos does nothing for me i'm so sorry. holger/anyone i can be into. i keep starting and deleting a very dumb and indulgent denis/domi fic where domi decides to coach denis and it is a mess that's kind of successful except it ends up with a v weird sexual dynamic ¯_(ツ)_/¯. if i am being honest i am still thinking about dyke novak. sorry. other pairings i just...idk. i don't even think the current crop of players are boring but there's just less content and they feel more media trained/resistant to saying anything interesting? but then i read transcripts and watch interviews and i don't know if that's true. even in trophy speeches...it's like i see. i think i still just have brain blockage of how f/f is perceived vs. m/m and i'm not...trying to be like well you must read/write f/f to be a good person because that's...stupid. it is just...i do not care about men nearly as much as i do women in any facet! it is not on purpose! or to prove anything or out of any sense of ~activism. i just cannot find men that interesting and i do not want to come across as standing on a soapbox or whatever. but idk. the difference is interesting to me? i felt like it was SO easy to come up with random tidbits of ideas/stories/pwp vague ideas for the like....2012-2018 era and now i'm stuck half the time and everything feels so repetitive. maybe there's just less...grounded in reality and the season is so jumpy without consistency (not of results but just of repetitive match ups or like...they are in the same place. and talk to each other off court) or whatever. i thought the olympics was going to be ripe with rpf happenings but no! it was just this weird "qinwen isn't friendly" bullshit. tho i guess that did result in one v good fic so there's that. idk. i have no point here.

already on AO3 pairings (* indicates ive written them already, from only this season, restricted from dec 2023 to now)

jannik/carlos (192)

roger/rafa (46)

holger/casper* (39)

daniil/stefanos (34)

karen/andrey (16)

novak/rafa (15)

grigor/andrey* (12)

daniil/andrey (11)

novak/andy (10)

flavio/ben(12)

jannik/sonego (8)

stefanos/zverev (7)

hubert/iga (6)

carlos/ferrero (6)

nikola/mate (5)

fritz/zverev (5)

jess/maria* (4)

iga/qinwen* (4)

draper/jannik (4)

novak/roger (3)

aryna/iga* (3)

karo/iga (3)

andrey/zverev (2)

daniil/daria (3)

paula/aryna* (2)

holger/jannik (2)

elena/aryna* (2)

carlos/novak

grigor/hubert

novak/holger* (2)

emma/bianca* (2)

iga/elena* (1)

qinwen/li na* (1)

naomi/iga*

maria/serena

jannik/carlos is soooo dominant it's crazy...good for them etc. the gap between m/m and f/f is wiiiiild but not really surprising. other pairings i've written but before this year angie/andrea, caro/serena, caro/alizé, caro/kristina, borna/donna.

potential pairings (that i would write, probably)

iga/bianca

novak/denis

aryna/jess

madi/sloane

jess/madi

coco/iga

jasmine/iga

donna/maria (technically already wrote this but)

elena/qinwen

holger/denis (spider man meme basically)

retirement fic still has a hold on me...which is so dumb but it does. but it never hits the way i want it to. maria/serena/caro/angie and any iteration of them....you have my attention. there's other pairings that i'd never write but think are interesting. jess/taylor, emma/qinwen is like...i can see the vision and i deeply respect it but i cannot make it work. reading it, hell yes. idk. i am back at a point where writing feels very useless and too self-indulgent and the payoff isn't really worth it but. who knows. off-season is a great time to make shit up.

[aromanticgarbage]

I think whats good about the story is not that i enjoy the idea of his suffering but it answers the morbid curiosity that I have about what it's like to have a seizure. I don't know if it's accurate but It let's me feel like I know more about his condition, you know what I mean

I don't enjoy the idea of his suffering either. What i do enjoy is reading it -> suffering -> i enjoy the idea of my suffering. Admittedly if u hadn't come into my ask box asking about my opinion on this fic i wouldn't have mentioned it publicly ever because it is a bit of a grey area morally so to speak. Like this is a real life person's medical condition. It's a delicate subject. Nonetheless, the fic itself has plenty of comments by several epileptics who found comfort in seeing an artist they love get support for a condition they themselves suffer from in an imaginary setting and they say that it's an accurate description of what its like. Personally i have never had to deal with anything of the sort but I don't have to see myself in someone to sympathize with their struggles. I love joj a little too much. I love his ff era and the friendships he maintained during this time. Its morbid curiosity yeah but i can't help but wonder how the cc would react to a medical emergency like this. Its a realistic scenario, epileptics have seizures all of the time in front of family and friends and its traumatizing for everyone involved. I found the story comforting. Joji has always had friends who care about him greatly. I love angst, i love whump, i love hurt-comfort. Always have. The fact that we are talking about rpf makes the situation a bit more complicated sure, but at the end of the day its just a fanfic someone wrote on their bedroom seven years ago. I love it. I am not going to apologize for it. Amen.

On another note.

There is a scene in the francis of the filth book where joji himself describes negi generation 4 having a seizure. The character in this scene is having some sort of vision brought on by chin chin himself (this is literally the ff book its all absurdity) but there is truth to it. I just thought it was interesting.

Ive personally done a lot of research on epilepsy and seizures in the past few months. Why? Half morbid / half genuine curiosity. Maybe i just have too much free time. There are a lot of resources out there that are easily available if you are truly curious about how this works (i recommend the epilepsy foundation as a starting point). Also its important to remember that this doesn't just affect that one guy whose music you and i like. It affects a lot of people every day and a lot of this information could save someone's life in a moment of need. First aid is important to know. Even if u learnt it from joji rpf.

[sssammich]

yeah the early woso era was A Time but it gave us some great gems like all of the collaborations the woso authors used to write and the way you guys all built off of each other's work, that podcast you used to have with that other woso author (where you would start recording and not tell her you started the recording for each episode's intro), and specifically that krashlyn fic where ashlyn cheated on ali that ended up coming true (that fic was literally all i could think about for the entire month after the whole sophia bush fiasco)

i also dropped out of fandom at around the same time but ended up rejoining a literal decade later because of the 2023 world cup last year and some of the changes that shocked me were:

tobin heath and christen press are dating??? and went public with their relationship

kristie mewis is the gay sister?? AND is engaged to sam kerr (the first thing that popped into my mind after hearing her name again was that video she did with carli lloyd riding a scooter in a banana suit?)

euoprean woso players' popularity have been rising like crazy in the past ~5 years or so (esp the english national team and league)

so there's a lot more variety of who to be a fan of outside of the uswnt which is great

the sport has also grown so much more diverse (more woc, more publicly out lgbtq+ players)

more publicly out lgbtq+ players means more super cute (public) irl queer relationships to follow <3

but it also means so much queer dating drama between the players 💀

i feel like there's less rpf these days

which might be because there's less of a 4th wall between fans and players like the older generation were all normies but the newer generation are as chronically online as we are

but that doesn't explain why there's so much self-insert fanfiction (there's sooo much)

it's gone more mainstream which means more collective fandom brainrot so it's probably for the best that you're no longer in the fandom

0H MY GOD THE *PSYCHIC DAMAGE* ANON HOW COULD U DO THIS TO ME

i legitimately forgot i held a podcast about woso and woso rpf LMAOO that was insane unhinged it's all gone now unforch and probably for the best (god what a wild time. for the record, i loved it and it was great, but jesus i forgot. i remember going into my partner's closet LMAO because she actually had one so i could record. fucking wild)

anyway yeah lmao listen despite being a consistent talex shipper, there was ZERO questions that alex morgan was like the straighest straight who ever straighted. but tobin. well, that was no surprise. christen press tho! that was a surprise to me lol some of my best fics in that fandom are, like, not about talex tho LMAO

OMGGG KRASHLYN FIC LOVE TRIANGLE; what fic you're thinking of and what i wrote is probably not the same. but this just makes me think of the ashlyn/ali/niki fic that came about when seeley wrote one thing and then jessie wrote a response fic and then i wrote a response fic to that. holy fuckkkk this feels like my roots of writing just popping up announced. how do you solve your writer's block about two sad women? you add a third sad woman in the mix. holds up. (i mean, these are real people so cheating is literally the worst and love triangles in general can be super complicated but from a storytelling standpoint: *chefs kiss* delicious)

everything you've bulleted out is like equal parts surprising and not surprising but i will agree that it was probably for the best that im no longer in the fandom.

(also self-insert fics are, like, so bold. i don't hate it or anything because, like, it's fanfiction do whatever you want but it's so...revealing. me writing the way i write is already making me so exposed but to just blatantly blitz through that and go for a self-insert. damn.)

[brainrotallthewaydown1312]

i had a hard time voting here because there are two answers I could have given. and when you look at the timeline, it was hard to choose.

I started watching Merlin when season 1 was still coming out when I was 7 years old. I was raised in a Christian house so I had not been told about gay yet and so did not have the words to put to my own queerness , let alone the chemistry I was seeing on screen. but I did know that the dynamic between Arthur and Merlin made it the best show I had ever seen. and it has remains one of my favorite shows 15 years later.

while I was waiting for season 3 of Merlin, my grandma showed me sherlock and I loved it. and because there were 3 episodes and production hell already happening, i seeked out all the info my 9 year old brain could handle and that was how I discovered fandom. and shipping. and I did not have the words for why but I knew that this was a ship that made sense. and I was little so I was mostly a lurker but I fell headfirst into the Sherlock corner of superwholock from the start. later I watched tjlc and all the craziness on my own Tumblr dash in real time.

and somewhere around season 4 of Merlin, I started to apply what I had been learning elsewhere and finally realized what about the chemistry in that show had me so hooked. and so I fell into that fandom. and it was there where I was seeing more grounded takes on queer coding and queer baiting and what makes shipping work and I was watching for it like a hawk in everything because I was starting to notice that my favorite characters weren't the only queer coded ones.

then 2012 hit.

in January we were hit with the richenback fall. and that episode was what really drove it home that the subtext in Sherlock was intentional. and that they had no intention of following through with it. it was the first time I really saw the bait being left and followed the trail out of desperate hope anyway.

but in December, Merlin ended. this was a major life event for me. I had moved several hundred miles and I went back home to watch the last season with my grandma. and I watched as the show carefully wove in all the tails it had left about fate and destiny and as Arthur was told Merlin's big secret and as he died just short of saying what we all knew he wanted to. as that bus drove past Merlin in nearly that same spot so much later. and for the first time I had seen a show masterfully and perfectly write love at its core through ups and downs and problems both serious and stupid for 5 entire seasons, culminating in the most honest direct connection they have ever had and deathbed confessions between them and not a single acknowledgement of the queerness of it all. and for the first time I had to grieve the loss of wasted narrative potential alongside the bittersweet loss of the show I loved so much. I saw Sherlock as the bait it was first, but this was the first time I was really hit with a bait.

I voted for Merlin because that show started first, I saw it first, it ended first, and it hit me first. and also I don't want to give sherlock the honors. at least Merlin is a show I can be proud of loving. Sherlock is one of my black sheep fandoms where I enjoyed it and I can't deny its importance to me but I do not actually like it anymore and it kind of makes me sad. both that it went so far downhill and that I spent so long being so invested. for other black sheep fandoms of mine, see my glee or Dan and Phil rpf eras

this is supposed to be what was ship that was actively queerbaiting in the show. i’m intrigued

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[sineala]

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

[fanficmemes]

Hey guys!!! Thanks to our lovely anon/blog historian, Soupy, we now have a recorded history!! Blog lore, my beloved. I'll try and start adding in our new things too, but to any newbies out there, come take a look :):):):)

About the lore for this blog, i cannot remember everything, but i can do something about the cursed asks lore and history, since i just scrolled all the posts in the tags!

31 Jan 2021: an anonymous send an ask asking what people actually mean when they tell a ship if "pedophilic". This start a big number of asks about real survivor and how fucked up is fandom water down the word, purity culture, and consequently story time about harassing people in fandom for purity culture.

1 Feb 2021: someone speak about how much fucked up fics helped them. This probably opened the possibility of cursed asks. The same day, someone other send an ask about a terrible person known for harassing people about the sexuality of a character. The person is called "train fucker".

2 Feb 2021: anonymous point the attention on the train fucking thing. The cursed ask tag is created.

In the following hours, always in the cursed ask tag, people discover the fandom was Death Note and the guy was apparently in real attracted to trains and planes. Hell break down, memes are created.

History is made.

One of the characters will later become protagonists of the tag already existed. PKD already was knew since the 22 Jan 2021, when they sent an ask about the color asks and you had the intuition the tags he was probably someone with a piss kink and the tag "chronicles of piss" was created.

Cursed ask history part 2:

At this moment on time,the tags is still not clearly used. One of the First post tagged as such, the 9th Feb, is an anon answering to the ear fucking conversation about micropenis, while all the other posts are not tagged. The day after PKD enter the cursed asks tag, while the others ask still stay out of it. People start sending the stories they read.

12 Feb Hagrid/Hedwig fics are discovered. Owl fucking anon appear. Someone suggest a friendship between them and mlp guy.

Also mlp pony guy is a lore being who did not appear before in the #cursed asks, but already had their history in the simpler ask tag and in the previous cancel scale period, that we could call the ancestor of #cursed ask.

The First post tagged as cancel scale is from the 2nd Jan 2021. It was an anon answering your post of the same day "alright guys scale 1-10 how screwed r u if it ao3 history and bookmarks get released".

This is the gold era of this blog lore. The philanthropist, wound fucking discourse, rpf bdsm and mlp guy (with the first ask behind paywall) appeared during the first month and a half of the year, mixing at the end with the cursed ask tag.

Cursed ask history part 2:

At this moment on time,the tags is still not clearly used. One of the First post tagged as such, the 9th Feb, is an anon answering to the ear fucking conversation about micropenis, while all the other posts are not tagged. The day after PKD enter the cursed asks tag, while the others ask still stay out of it. People start sending the stories they read.

12 Feb Hagrid/Hedwig fics are discovered. Owl fucking anon appear. Someone suggest a friendship between them and mlp guy.

Also mlp pony guy is a lore being who did not appear before in the #cursed asks, but already had their history in the simpler ask tag and in the previous cancel scale period, that we could call the ancestor of #cursed ask.

The First post tagged as cancel scale is from the 2nd Jan 2021. It was an anon answering your post of the same day "alright guys scale 1-10 how screwed r u if it ao3 history and bookmarks get released".

This is the gold era of this blog lore. The philanthropist, wound fucking discourse, rpf bdsm and mlp guy (with the first ask behind paywall) appeared during the first month and a half of the year, mixing at the end with the cursed ask tag.

Cursed ask history part 3:

The philanthropist appeared the same day #the cancel scale started. With their iconic "i am a shameless philanthropist and so my bookmarks are public. I eat dead doves for breakfast. Come on down to the buffet y'all! You want some wound fucking? 8-yr-old omega abortion? I got you fam, watch me scramble these eggs" they left a forever sign in this blog. Still to this days asks are written to know if they are good. They obtained a 12/10 in the cancel scale.

Wound fucking discourse started, also the same day, by CB answering "is that where the wound fucking comes in??" At a ask about vivisection and medical experimentation. Discourse about what classify as a wound and how it works continued trought the day.

Rpf bdsm is thought to have beat the philanthropist with their mix of rape, underage, incest in a foursome, huge age, rpf tentacles and, mostly, someone getting turned into a pickle and his partner fucking himself with it.

This also started a string of asks about people being transformed in object used for sex.

Rpf bdsm would appear again later that day to specify the pickle fic was a rpf.

Cursed ask history part 4 (i think? Already lost the count)

Mlp guy. The one and only. Always in the terrible 2 Jan 2021, they first appeared in the tags of an answer to a marvel ask. #Hey HEY mlp guy #u know who u r #i'm afraid to look at this ask #like yeah we saw some shit tonight but this blows that outta the fuckin WATER #y'all would dead ass have to pay me to post it

Someone noticed the tags and asked about it, and a strong sexual tension between everyone and the unpublished mlp ask started. Someone ended up paying, cause the ask was later published as last post of the day and terrorized every follower of the blog. It was published as screenshot of the ask, and is not even put in the #cancel scale.

MLP guy stayed so in the apex of the cursed asks for some months, till the Pokémon ask by soupy was published the 9th may 2021, taking home a 15/10. MLP guy made a Tumblr profile, @therealmlpguy, in retiliation, and reblogged answering with a new terribly cursed fic. CB have still not voted it, so who have the worst cursed ask is still in question.

The day of #cancel scale the blog fanficmemes lost many followers, but the story was, as we know, not finished.

Cursed ask history part 5

I like to stay an half cryptid of this blog, so i will not tell my blog of origin, but i can tell you I am Soupy. Also i need to know if i am actually considered a cryptic of the blog and if i need to make a lore post about myself XD.

This is starting to get hard cause i cannot reread what i already sent, but the end of the tunnel is near.

We already told about owl fucking anon in the cursed ask tag, but their story is a bit more longer. The cursed ask was actually their big return, and they are probably one of the most proficious lore making, having also a part in the creation of the PKD legend. They should really have their own tag.

How? Well.

The 17 Jan 2021, when the big part of the cancel scale was done and the elders of the lore created, they sent an anon ask about what the cancel scale made them remember. It was a fic, red when they were ten or eleven, about someone fucking an owl while the owl was on their period. Consensual, and apparently the authors were two teen girl who write only character x owl. Their mom proofread. CB answered with their profile picture, edited so that it red "i can't believe it's gotten even worse!" Instead of "i can't believe it's not canon".

This post created, if we want to say, PKD, cause their first ask, that assigned them piss kink, was yes about the color asks (that, in case someone does not remember, was CB asking what colors people assigned to them), but had as explanation "if you keep posting stuff like the owl period whatever". So the owl fucking anon indirectly created, the 22 Jan 2021, PKD.

Owl fucking anon continued their ascension to lore of the blog.

The 12th Feb 2021 sent an ask were they were surprised someone had found Hagrid x Hedwing fics, and than sent anther 9 parts ask about the story of how they red lot of cursed shits thanks to an old tumblr blog that had the links, and how from there they found an author who only published Hagrid x Hedwing, and how that introduced them to FF smut.

(it is also discovered they are only 15, baby, please, i am noone to talk with the shits i red at the time but i hope you are ok).

They are now consacrated in the memory of the blog.

Cursed ask history part 6

Before continuing with the history of the cursed asks, is now time to finally give a small talk about PKD. We know how they originated, but how they become so famous?

Probably is the fact they appeared so many time during the last months. Being it for cancel scale, cursed asks or just normal asks, they continue to give us company with their exploration of piss kink fic. Is true they soundly negate having the kink the first months, but after lot of memes and people speaking about it, the 25 Apr 2021 they finally admitted of having the kink,and discovered it reading an a/b/o Captain America fic.

I would suggest to read all the posts, but they stopped being tagged halfway through, so is half in the specific #chronicles of piss and half in the #cursed ask

Cursed ask history part 7

The big lore is finished, and now only the later history stay.

#cancel scale posts and #cursed asks post lived side by side for some days. The owl fucking one of the 12 Feb was actually the last cursed fic published in the cancel scale post, leaving the tag only for some history reference later.

#cursed asks saw the appearence of every type of cursed possible to thought, with scat and nipple fucking between the different tags. At the start there was no specific day chosen, but later, for CB schedule reasons, Saturday was assigned as cursed ask day, and some week later it was moved to Sunday.

And here we are, today, to see what other cursed things we will bring in this world

Cursed fic History part 8

The cursed fic History have been covered, but i still think is important to talk about some of the before time tags that created the good ecosystem for the creation of #cursed ask.

The most famous is #the lube discussion.

It started the 23 Aug 2020, when CB wrote a post about FF using the word "supple" in smut without the thing being actually supple. In the tag, they added #also #that does Not work as lube.

Some anon asked what was being used as lube, that was answered with "one was peanut butter. I will not discuss the other". This started the bug lube discussion, were everyone talked about what they continingly see used as lube when it cannot be used as lube.

Between the classics soap and blood, we see some more daring one as mud, yogurt, aloe vera, years, milk, hot sauce and the more intersting, cannoli (have no idea if they are talking about the cream you put in cannoli or some american thing i don't know).

Nothing reached cursed material, but it put the first seed for the blog.

[dirty-urie]

McBrendon

Second Person

Brendon x Female Reader

Unspecified Era

Smut Oneshot

NC-17

3.2k Words

Warnings in order of appearance: RPF, language throughout, not pre-discussed roleplay scene, medical roleplay and language, sex

Author's Notes:

So, basically, I was re-watching Grey's Anatomy, and I was like, "What if Brendon was here?" and then this was born. I have no idea if someone who's never watched Grey's Anatomy would understand or appreciate this, but basically what I think you need to know is that Derek Shepherd and Mark Sloan are sexy manwhores (in the earier seasons), and a common recurring joke in the earlier seasons of the show is putting "Mc" in front of adjectives to describe love interests. The fic is supposed to be more silly than sexy, but maybe it's sexy too, I don't really know.

"Wait, what about those two?" He asks, and you sigh exasperatedly.

"Brendon, just assume that all of the doctors on the Doctor Sex Show have slept together. That's the whole point."

He groans and slumps back in his chair, "Remind me why we have to watch this overdramatic doctor smut in the theater? The theater should be a sacred space for Disney movies or action movies with boobies and explosions, not 'ohhhh does McCreamy only like Natalie because she hooked up with Appendectomy?.'"

"It's my week on laundry duty, and whoever's folding laundry gets to watch whatever they want wherever they want. That's the rules, but you can go watch something in the living room or on your computer or on your phone if you don't like it," you offer, trying to get rid of him. You love Brendon, you love him so much, but sometimes you need to sit in the dark and fold laundry with no other noises except your soapy little doctor show.

"Fine. The men of the house are going to go watch something manly, don't bother us. Come on, Bogart!"

Brendon's little Jack Russell turns to look at you as if asking to stay, but you pat his back and send him off to go snuggle with his dad. You don't think you could handle Brendon's betrayed gasps if you let Bogart finish the episode with you. You and Penny will be fine ogling at Patrick Dempsey while file-folding Brendon's 68 pairs of gray and black sweatpants alone. Brendon kisses your cheek before he leaves. "Have fun with the boobs and explosions, babe," you tell him on his way out of the room.

"Oh, you know I will!"

•••

Two weeks later, it's your turn to fold laundry again, and you're back to watching Grey's, this time in the living room. The dogs are sitting next to you, eyes glued to the screen. Brendon's also in the room, bitching about "introducing this drivel into our home," but you're ignoring him because you don't need that kind of negativity in your life.

He finally quiets down, and you appreciate the five minutes of peace. Until… "Are you unsatisfied with our sex life?" He asks out of the blue.

You're taken completely aback for a second before you scramble to pause the tv. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, what? Where did this come from?" you ask him. What the fuck? Is he unsatisfied with your sex life?

"Well, we haven't had sex in weeks practically." Three days actually. It's been three days, but you don't interrupt him. "And you keep watching this sexy doctor show, so I don't know, maybe you're feeling like a bored housewife," Brendon explains.

You laugh at him, and he looks offended. "You're overthinking it, baby boy. It's just a show! Sure, the sexual tension between the entire hospital and Mark Sloan is spicy and exciting, but I'm not trying to compensate for anything lacking in my life. If anything, all that spice just translates into better sex for both of us. Okay?"

He looks very skeptical. "Hm, sure. I totally believe you."

You don't necessarily think you properly got your point across to him, but Meredith just made another bad decision, and you need to see how it pans out. "Okay, great, now go watch a manly show with Bogs in our room if you're going to keep whining."

Brendon does not, in fact, go into your room to watch a manly show on his laptop. Instead, he and Bogart start watching season 1 of Grey's Anatomy, immediately getting highly invested in the lives of the ambitious-yet-messy surgical interns. He's trying to figure out what exactly appeals to you about the show.

•••

It's his turn to fold the clothes, and he's doing it wrong, but you're resisting the urge to do it for him because you're a feminist, damnit. He's still letting you watch Grey's Anatomy because he's a doll (and you don't know this, but he's also become a bit of a fan.)

"Do you think I'm more a Mark Sloan or a Derek Shepherd?" He asks.

You scoff, "You're a George."

"I am not! I'm way sexier than George!"

"You're just jealous because I'm an Addison."

"Pshh, you're a Bailey. You wanna know how I know?" He asks.

"Fine. Tell me." You give in.

"You desperately want to correct my laundry technique."

•••

"Meet me in the on-call room in five," Brendon whispers against the back of your neck while you're drying the dishes from dinner. What is this man doing? "Meet you where?" You ask, but he's already walked away. You're not sure whether to actually wait the five minutes or just try to go find him.

You give him three minutes before going to the bedroom. You honestly don't know what you were expecting, but it wasn't Brendon laying on his side in the middle of your bed, shirtless under a white coat. He has on a pair of navy blue scrub pants that aren't particularly flattering, but they still look nice on him.

"Explain to me what's happening here, homie," you tell him.

"I'm being sexy for you! So sexy! I'm Dr. Brendon "McKinky" Urie, I'm a general surgery attending, but my real specialty is pleasure."

You visibly cringe for him. "You're a McDoofus, and your real specialty is probably malpractice."

He pouts. "Play along. Come on. Please? Be Dr. Y/N Sexy."

You roll your eyes. "Why do you get your real last name, but I'm Dr. Sexy?"

"Because we're not married in this fantasy! We're both cheating on our spouses but not in a tragic way, in a sexy way! Come on! Let yourself have fun," he pleads.

You feel yourself start to cave. "Fine, I'll play along, but I'm stopping this the minute I feel weird, okay?"

"Of course. And, babe, if you don't want to do this, you absolutely do not have to," he says, serious now.

"No, no, Brendon. I'm down for this. I think you're a total goof for doing it, but I trust you."

He brightens, "Great! Now it's time for your examination." He waggles his eyebrows, climbing off the bed and gesturing for you to take his place.

"Exam? Am I a patient? Why am I in the on-call room if I'm a patient?" You ask.

"Doctors need exams too, y'know. We're both doctors, but I don't know, you need a routine exam for like moles or something. Take your clothes off." He says, and you take a split-second to be grateful that Brendon got discovered for his musical talents and will therefore never be an actual doctor.

You stifle back your laughter and strip down to your underwear, lying on your back on top of the white sheet he put over the comforter to protect the bed from any potential messes. He stands over you next to the bed, and you're happy that you at least get to stare at his body during this little experiment. The whole "doctor" thing may not be driving you wild on its own, but your half-naked husband always will.

"Thank you for coming to this appointment, Dr. Y/N Sexy," he says. Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh, you chant in your head. "First," he says, making his voice husky, "I need to test your reflexes." Something tells you he won't be using one of those little hammers. He bends down and breathes against your neck. You shiver, and goosebumps appear on your arms. You're glad you wore your front clasp bra when he unclips it and has immediate access to your breasts. He circles around your nipple with his finger, and they harden quickly. "Mmm, good reflexes indeed. Very responsive," he purrs. "I don't think your test results are conclusive yet. You should keep going," you encourage. He rubs your scalp, and your head rolls back. You're worried that you'll start drooling.

Brendon smirks at you a little, and his smugness is slightly infuriating. Yes, you like him touching you, but that hardly proves that his weird roleplaying was a good idea. "Just like I observed, fantastic reflexes. But I now must move on to the chest exam." He rests his head on your chest, and you're beginning to suspect that this whole thing was just a ploy to touch your boobs a lot. "Is your heart rate always this fast or just when your hot coworker is touching you?"

"Normally only my husband, also named Brendon… for some reason, can get me so worked up, but now I'm thinking of leaving him for you, McCrinkly."

"It's McKinky, and your husband sounds gorgeous and super smart. You should keep him around," he says, climbing onto you and groping your breasts. "In my professional opinion, these are nice tits."

You have to bite your lip to resist the urge to laugh again. You wouldn't quite say you're aroused, but you are having fun at least. "Okay, okay, doc. Enough of the preliminary exam; I need five and a half inches, stat."

"You couldn't round up to six while we're playing!?"

"Oh, come on, you're lucky I rounded up to five and a half!"

"Rude! So rude!"

You kiss him to shut him up. "Sorry, baby, I won't bully you anymore. Now, how about a cervical exam?" You suggest, craving his thickness inside you.

That cheers him up. Brendon resumes his doctor roleplay. "First, let me complete the dermatological examination. If you could remove your undergarments, please."

You throw your bra on the floor and take off your underwear.

He admires the small amount of newly-exposed skin. "So many marks on your breasts and pubic region. Did your hot husband leave these too, or should I investigate for a skin condition?" He asks, ducking between your thighs to add some more.

"Yeah, he left them there. My sexy husband is kind of the best, but enough about him," you say.

New dark spots pop up after he finally moves his mouth from the sensitive skin of your thighs. "Oops, I think I just burst a couple of capillaries."

Well, someone did some light googling. "Do you think I'll make it?" You ask, faking drama.

"Yes, but you'll need someone to pay lots of attention to the area between your thighs."

He never mastered the art of subtly, did he? "I don't think that will be an issue. My husband will be thrilled."

"Great, that's taken care of. Shall we commence with the cervical exam then?" He asks, rolling off you to tug off his scrubs and underwear. He keeps his dumb coat on, which is more goofy than sexy without clothes underneath, but you don't tell him that. "And we can test your motor skills at the same time. Hands and knees, please."

You obey, and he moves behind you to enter you. He pushes into you quickly and hard, just like you like it. "God, there's so much blood in my, hm, um corpus cavernosum… I think," he says.

"Your what? Are you trying to cast a Harry Potter spell? because that's a whole different roleplay," You crane your neck back to see him, and your eyes widen. "Brendon, are you," you need to pause to choke back your laughter, "are you reading from a flashcard? While inside me?"

He's on his knees behind you, squinting at a white notecard. He flips the card over and reads from it, "the corpus cavernosum is, um, the main erectile tissue in the genitals. So, uh, I was trying to say that I'm hard for you."

That's it, you can't contain your laughter. You can't even bear to look at Brendon without cracking up. Tears are streaming down your face. He hisses, and you think it's because you've upset him, but you turn back to look at him, and he's biting his lip, his head tilted back.

"Are you good, B?" You ask, a little worried.

He's breathing hard. "Yeah, just your laughing caused contractions around my cock, and I was not prepared. Felt good, just unexpected." He pulls almost all the way out and then jerks back in, not quite slamming but gearing up to it.

"Faster, please. Careful still, but faster," you request.

He speeds up perfectly, finally filling you up and relieving the ache inside you. You relish each time his hips meet your body, feeling close to him, even if the position isn't as intimate as he usually likes. You suppose successful Dr. Kinky, notorious womanizer, wouldn't necessarily want to make loving, passionate eye contact with all of his conquests.

"So, Dr. Kinky-"

"No, it's doctor Urie, McKinky."

Jesus, you need a script. "So, Dr. Urie, do you have enough energy after all those lobotomies or whatever to rub a girl's clit? I bet my husband, the other Brendon, would touch me."

"Well, I would never even bother to compete with such a stellar man, but I can still try to get you off." His hands move between your thighs to touch your cunt. "Oh no, so much excess fluid here. I hope nothing's wrong." He puts a finger on your throbbing clit and feigns a sigh of relief, "Good, I've found a pulse." His touch is feather-light as he slowly strokes you. The contrast between his fast, hard thrusts and delicate strokes somehow enhances both of his actions.

"Oh, that's nice," you moan.

"You mind if I have you roll over? I still have to test your flexibility, and I'd love to do that with your legs on my shoulders."

"Fuck yeah."

He pulls out, and you get on your back; he gets you ready by situating the pillows underneath you. You rest a leg on either shoulder, and he thrusts in again. You don't want to admit it to him, but you feel like you'll need to come soon. The spikes of pleasure pulsing between your legs have been getting stronger and closer together, and now that you can see what you do to him, rather than just hearing his occasional grunts, you feel even closer to crossing that finish line.

"I'm observing some rapid contractions, Sexy. Should I note in your chart how close you are to coming all over me? Because it seems to me that you're failing your stamina and endurance evaluation," Dr. Urie teases.

You close your eyes to try to eliminate a source of the arousal, but you still feel painfully close to the edge.

Brendon inadvertently shifts a bit, and that does it. Your arousal peaks intensely, and you try to restrain your reactions on the off chance he doesn't notice. However, you're pretty sure he does notice your orgasm when his movements slow to a stop, and that's confirmed when he outright says it. "You just came," he states. It's not a question.

You nod, not bothering to deny it.

He pulls out, and you finally get to see his still-hard cock soaked with your wetness. "Well I suppose, we can run… further tests to reach a full diagnosis," he practically croons, pulling his scrub pants back on, and a wave of lust spreads from your stomach. Fine, the doctor thing is a little hot. "It's up to you though, I defer to your professional opinion."

"I think my exam is complete, actually, but I know you've been complaining of some pain in this region," you give his crotch a quick squeeze. "Do you mind stripping so I can investigate?"

He immediately takes off his coat, obviously excited, and gives it to you, so you put it on. "So, can you describe the pain?" You ask, putting a hand on his thigh.

"Kind of an ache, I guess?"

You squeeze his thigh, "And you'd say the pain is mainly here?"

"No, uh, um, to the right."

You squeeze his other thigh, "Oh, I see, right here?"

"No, not, um, my thigh."

"Sorry, I understand." You lay your hand flat on his stomach, still carefully avoiding his cock. "Your stomach must be hurting."

"Still not quite."

You clench your jaw in fake frustration. "Well, could you just show me where you need my attention, Doctor Urie?"

He shoves down his pants and grasps his leaking cock, groaning in relief when he starts to tentatively touch himself.

"Yes, very good, thank you. Would you say the ache subsides with stimulation?" You ask professionally.

Brendon nods and smirks a bit, "Yeah, you could say that."

"Well, I think you just need to achieve ejaculation," you diagnose.

"Is that, ah, covered under my insurance?" He asks cheekily, still jerking himself.

You laugh, going to dig the lubricant out, "Okay," you nudge his hand away, "leave this to the professionals." You pour the clear lube into your hand. "This may be a bit cold," you warn. He doesn't really need the lube, he's both leaking profusely and still slick from being inside you, but you want to keep up the "doctor vibes." You grasp him firmly and stroke quickly, trying to get him off as soon as you can. You kind of want to use your mouth, but you can't think of a good reason to within the roleplay. That's mostly fine, though, because you can tell he's about to come.

He comes all over your hand without warning a minute or so later. He shudders and groans, spurting twice more. You didn’t realize how worked up he was. Of course, you saw how hard he was, but to come this much from just jerking him off means he was really turned on. "Outstanding sperm production, sir," you say, crudely wiping him up with a tissue.

"Okay, no more doctor talk. My brain is too mushy," he groans.

You take off the coat and get into bed, cuddling against him. "If your brain is mushy, you probably should see a doctor."

He giggles. "So, would you do this again?"

You think for a second. "Well, I'd roleplay with you again, but you have to warn me next time. And probably not the doctor thing again. It was hot playing with you, but thinking about actual medical procedures is not my thing."

He yawns, "Noted about the warning you next time, and that's too bad. I was really looking forward to the oral exam. How big is your mouth? How's your swallow technique?" He says, half-jokingly.

"Hey, don't push it, or we're doing a prostate exam, and due to budget cuts to the hospital, we're going to be low on lubricant."

He cringes, "Point taken. I don't need a doctor roleplay; the next time I want a blowjob, I'll just ask."

You get out of bed and put on your pajamas. "Well, if it's in the next 45 minutes, your request is getting denied because Penny Lane, Bogart, and I are watching the real Grey's Anatomy in the theater while you're still too weak to complain about it. And this is a good time to tell you that my character is not actually a medical doctor. I have a PHD in film studies. I’m a fraud.”

His mouth drops open, "You're telling me that wasn't an official medical handjob?!"

"I trust that you'll get over this. Love you, babe."

He scowls but still mutters a quiet, “I love you too.”

[purekesseltrash]

My Fic List

Whelp, decided I should do one of these.  I have mostly written for Hockey RPF and BNHA, as you have likely already seen!

My BNHA Fics

Bury Them Deep

- “Shouji Mezou's entire life has revolved around being a goalie and playing hockey since he was five years old. After being drafted in the third round in the NHL, Shouji has two more years of college before moving on to playing professional hockey like he's always wanted. Or at least like he always thought he wanted. An injury that ends his season throws him into a tailspin, forcing him to take a look at his life and how he is going to live it, especially after meeting his fascinating new goth history tutor.”

(This bad bitch is 81k total and is chock full of my red hot hockey takes and midwestern references.  I love it very much and it is a sweet baby.)

The Rooftop Necromancy series AKA my black metal band AU:

Downhill from Here 

- “ Hizashi just wants to tour the country with his best friends with their metal band in their shitty van like they've been planning for years. He'd successfully hidden his crush on one of them for years, after all, he would definitely be able to make this work and keep things fun and uncomplicated. Until Aizawa decided to start acting weird. “

(In which I take you all on a nostalgic trip to 2006-2008 metal culture and you can see the black metal love song that my dumb ass wrote.)

The Perfect Mistake

- “ It wasn't as though Hizashi had planned on breaking up with his boyfriend while they were on tour in a tiny cargo van with no room and no peace. He would have much rather preferred to do it when they were home and he could easily go and crawl back into his mom's basement. But he didn't have a choice. “

(As relationships tend to do, theirs goes through problems.)

Rooftop Necromancy

-"He’d even ended up leaning into the crowd when someone’s elbow had connected solidly with his nose and thrown him back. They’d gone quiet as Hizashi got himself up to his feet, ripped off his now bloody ‘Within Temptations’ tshirt from 2004, whipped his hair back from his face and screamed, “That’s what I’m FUCKING talking about.” into the mic.

They went wild for it, cheering as blood ran down his nose, past his mouth and dripped onto the stage, leaving him feeling like an otherworldly monster performing an occult ritual. Metal, he thought dazedly to himself, why in the fuck had he ever stopped doing metal."

(I hyperfocused so hard at the idea of Mic as a metal head that I wrote this in seven straight hours and WROTE THROUGH THE ATTEMPTED COUP ON DEMOCRACY WITHOUT KNOWING IT.  It’s a bit rough, but it’s got some good parts and it spawned the whole damn series.)

Hands Up

- "But of course he had, they had always been able to read each other and what they meant. That had often been their problem, if he was going to be honest."

(In which they figure their shit out.  Basically it was written when I was thinking alot about how my own mental health had evolved through the years.  It’s basically the story of two people who are both very good for each other and also very bad and how they deal with that.  It’s probably the most personally meaningful thing I’ve ever written.)

The other BNHA fics:

Waking Up With Ghosts

-"Hizashi opened his eyes to a world that belonged to ghosts. His headphones were gone and the gray, grimy world that he felt more than saw was muffled and still. This was bad, he hazily thought."

In which we follow Hizashi shortly after the events of 296. How he's found, how he finds out and how he has to tell.”

(I fished this one out of the garbage of my Google Docs because I’d written most of it and forgotten about it.  I dragged it out, prettied it up a little and threw it up on AO3.  It is by far my most well read BNHA fic, go figure.)

Leave Her Johnny

-”Captain Hizashi Yamada has combed the Seven Seas looking for the elusive smuggler Eraserhead. He has spent years searching for him, tracking his movements and trying to anticipate where he would be next. But he had never considered what would happen when he finally found him. “

(I wrote a paragraph of this and was immediately like ‘I MUST CREATE THIS’.  I take some chances writing wise in this as the whole thing is done in a Victorian Era ish style of writing.  But I think it’s effective and the ending is likely one of the best that I’ve ever managed.  I’m proud of it.)

Gold Rush

-”"That earned him a laugh and Mashirao’s smile made something in his chest ache, something that made him want to hurt. Why had he ever left?

“I’m really not,” Mashirao was saying but Shinsou just shook his head and kissed him once, twice and wished he could take the sunny afternoon and make it stay forever. Make it stay forever like Mashirao somehow had, while the neighborhood had adjusted without Hitoshi’s permission.

“You are,” he said, “And I love it.”

I love you, he should have said.  But as Mashirao’s eyes softened and the blonde pushed him back against the bed, Hitoshi knew he didn’t need to say it."

(You know how sometimes you listen to a Death Cab for Cutie song about gentrification over and over until a fic comes out?  Because that’s basically what happened here.)

Black Sun

‘"But then he remembered the way that Shouji had eaten the night after, one hand curled into his hair as he hung back in the corner. Shouji hid when something was wrong, like a wounded cat trying to find a dark place to either live or die and he was being released tomorrow. Now was the time to push or he’d find Shouji right back on his bed, staring at nothing."

Something happened to Shouji on the beach. Tokoyami is sure of it.‘

(Aaaaaand Death Cab for Cutie strikes again.  But heyo, my first published ShouToko and it is SOFTTTTT)

In the Far and Mighty West

Mic came closer and despite himself, Shouta could not find it in him to feel afraid. “You won’t understand, not really. I’ll try, though. I’m like Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan or a jackalope or that fish that your friend caught that he swears he brought in but that you’ve never seen proof of. I’m the herd of dogies moving sweet and steady in the right direction, I’m no stragglers to worry about, I’m that perfect dog that’s there to keep them in line. I’m that group of good friends that you would kill for, I’m the woman who you’re dying to come home to, I’m that promised home of milk and honey. I’m Mic.”

Shouta stared at him dazedly and licked his lips, feeling drunk and stupid as he stared at the man. “You’re… magic?”

“I suppose you could call me that.”

(Cowboy!Erasermic.  Inspired heavily by American Gods and my own love of folk heroes.)

In Your Violence

- “'Mezou frowned, eyes narrowing. “Are you trying to say that you’re scared that I’ll be killed by having faith in you?”

“It would be in your best interest to stay away from me,” Fumikage finally said, his voice falling flat and quiet. “I am destined to be a monster.”

'Mezou gets the call he fears, the one that says that Fumikage has lost control again. But this time it's different, in more ways than one.”

(I listened to Silence by Marshmello until I went insane in this is the result.  Featuring some of my super depressing headcanons about Shouji!  But it’s not awful.)

My hockey fics that I still like:

Hufflepuff Halfwit  

- ““Zhenya, the wind is coming from the west, I will not remind you again. You shut that window before the house stinks of factories!” She snapped and Geno stared at the owl as though maybe it would know what to do. But instead, it had given a little hoot and wiggled inside, only to drop it’s letter on the counter.

He turned his head very slowly back to look at his mother, who had suddenly gone very quiet. “It… just showed up, Mama. And um. It brought a letter.” He waited again, looked back at the owl who had begun to nose at the pirozhkis in interest and then looked back at his mother with the best puppy dog eyes he had ever attempted. “Can I keep it?”

(This is a part of my hockey/Harry Potter au that still legitimately haunts my dreams.  It’s basically a Sid/Geno in Hogwarts but I really love the world building I got to do with Koldovstoretz, the Russian school of wizardry.  Don’t read ‘On the Word of a Slytherin’ though, I’m not as proud of that one.)

The Prince  

- “What the fuck.” Matt breathed out, sitting back heavily onto his hotel bed as he stared at his phone.

‘This is Henrik.’ The text read. ‘I would like to meet you. I will book a room in Pittsburgh at your convenience. Let me know what time will work for you.’  - 

(Listen, it’s Henrik Lundqvist/Matt Murray smut, I feel like that is novel and interesting and worth your attention.  I wax poetic on goalies in this, as you do.)

The Zoo of Toronto 

- “No one missed it when a massive porcupine had shuffled in between the reporters with a single minded focus, pushing media away until it was able to grip onto Phil’s suit pants and try to pull itself up. He hadn’t been able to do more then besides pick the animal up before it could shred his pants to shreds and walk out of the locker room before the decision had been made with the Toronto media.

Phil Kessel was guilty.” 

(Not gonna lie, this is probably my favorite of the hockey fics I’ve written.  And it’s Phil/Carl, which is never found anymore but it was a good pairing.)

[cinnamontoastandtears]

thank you for the tags @mithranqueer and @rufusrant vv happy that y’all thought of me haha 💕 (and thanks for the awesome questions @dustino)

have you ever written rpf before, or are the beatles the first you’ve ever done it for?

yeah, no, the beatles are the first and most likely the only rpf thing i’ll ever write. i’ve written fictional character ones before that but they were shitty so the first thing i ever posted was beatles too.

what’s your favorite ship to write and why?

starrison... because it just is, i have really no idea. they have the dynamic of the kind of relationship i want, i guess, (plus majorly awesome side-character energy) so yeah.

easiest beatle to write?

george. his personality is scarily similar to mine, so all i really have to do is think how i’d handle (x) situation.

hardest beatle to write?

paul. which is strange bc every mclennon fic ive ever written is from his perspective lmao. i think it’s hard for me to write him because i don’t actually like him very much and he gets on my nerves.

original era or modern au?

modern, but i can tolerate original if i throw period-typical homophobia in the bin. don’t like writing that.

least favorite pair to write?

mcharrison.. mostly cause they’re just such great friends and ugh, will die for some good mcharrison bromance (writing a fic like that now lmao...)

do you read or write more?

write, sorry to every fic ive ignored, but multi-chapters stress me out so much especially if they already have upwards of like 10,000 words. (very sorry if i’ve ignored your work, it’s really not your fault i promise) if i catch a multi chapter in its first couple updates i’m more inclined to read it. (but yeah, i write way more to the point where i have several almost finished fics in my drive, expect a week soon where i just post them all ahajkdks)

aus or canon compliant?

i mean i guess modern au if that counts? or them as like, anything but musicians because that’s hilarious.

ship you’d like to see more of?

uhhh... lenstarr or lennison (create the content you wish to see)

au/trope you want to see more of?

nothing specific. (but i love drunken confessions and bed-sharing, specifically together)

fanfic trope pet peeve?

ARCHETYPE BEATLES. archetype beatles can fucking kiss my ass. no sweeter-than-sweet ringo, depressed/moody/angry george, way-too-much-of-a-“leader” john, and paul the a) over-the-top drama queen or b) the Most Serious About Music™️. hate those. please be complex :))

prefer to write one shots or multi chaptered fics?

oneshots. but i did just start a multi chapter one you can read here if you’re interested 👀 (it’s sort of crack, idk if that hurts or helps)

on a scale from one to ten, how much has fanfiction taken over your life?

like maybe 6-7. it’s a lot.

do you have an author you look up to?

YES. literally all of them omg. seriously @mithranqueer @measuredoutinyears @dusted-0negin @celeste-fitzgerald @rufusrant @muzaktomyears @blobfishmiffy you all are very cool and i always feel very nervous to talk to you 😌

what’s a fic you can’t get tired of no matter how many times you read?

(time to sift through my bookmarks)

by @measuredoutinyears

a love that’s shining all around here - starrison (literally the first beatles fic in my bookmarks)

because you’re sweet and lovely - starrison (oh my god)

by @mithranqueer

baby, you’re a rich man - starrison (ahhhhhhh them as mob members is crazy and perfect and you know??)

by @blobfishmiffy

beatle toast (but gayer) - lennison (vv accurate for their dynamic)

a push in the right direction - starrison (the obliviousness and denial and the lenstarr bromance = everything)

by @celeste-fitzgerald

if this was a movie - starrison (i think the first time i read this i had to get up it was just so sweet)

by no particular author i know the tumblr url of:

peppermint kisses - mclennon (it’s christmas fluff i mean come on)

drunken lovers. - starrison (what did i say about drunken confessions)

attracts me like no other lover - george/everyone with endgame starrison (not sad but made me cry)

do you have a current fic obsession?

will you be mad if i say my own?

how seriously do you take fic writing?

not as serious as i should maybe, if you measure how much i don’t try and how much i live off of people’s praise :D

tags before the nsfw: ... @muzaktomyears (vv sorry if this is like the third or fourth tag, but y’all already talked about some of my favorites)

do sex positions (top/bottom) effect your enjoyment when reading or writing a fic?

kind of ?? more in the next question

do you have a preference over who’s who at all? if you do, then what are they?

in lieu of the confusing answer i had, here’s the six main ones:

mclennon: top john

starrison: prefer top george but either one is fine

lennison: top george

mcharrison: either way

mcstarr: mostly top ringo, maybe top paul

lenstarr: top ringo

this stems from the deal that if i read a ship and one or another of them is the top the possibility of me being able to picture it another way goes down (like first come, first served sort of)

is there any kind of kink you have to fight back including in every fic?

nor unless you count dirty talk which i always put in there anyway

when do you feel comfortable adding a smut scene in your fic, if it matters to you at all?

i guess in truth, i’ve only written a couple of fics (posted and unposted) with smut in them, and in a decent half of them i used sex to represent a deeper emotional connection rather than, like, because i was horny (but i have like 4 of those too so if you want i could..) /hj

[just-the-hiddles]

Writer’s Spotlight | myoxisbroken

Happy hump day, peeps!  This week’s spotlight is the queen of a historical fic, AU or canon.  The maven of food porn in a fic. And the reigning champ of teasing me with smut @myoxisbroken​ !  Let’s dive in!!

The Basics

MASTERLIST HERE

Any other names you want people to call you?

Miss Ox, myox, whatever you feel like!

How long have you been writing fic?

2 years.

What fandoms and/ships do you write?

MCU (Loki, Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes), other Tom Hiddleston characters (Pine, Conrad, Sharpe, Buxton, Nicholls, Plumptre, and ever-growing), and just branching out into Pedro Pascal with The Mandalorian; I also have a few Doctor Who fics in my Masterlist (Ten/Donna Noble)

How did you get started writing fic?

I was reading a ton of Doctor Who fic and enjoying the Doctor/River Song stories. Then I rewatched DW season 4 and was so depressed about Donna's ending that I immediately watched the David Tennant/Catherine Tate version of Much Ado About Nothing. And then I started to ship the Tenth Doctor and Donna.

So I read a bunch of their fic and thought, "You know what would be awesome? If someone wrote a WW2 AU where Donna's a single mother and the Doctor is an injured fighter pilot that she takes in as a boarder." And then I started to get snippets of dialogue in my head, and ideas for scenes, and I wondered if I might be able to write a story myself. I hadn't written anything in years, but I decided to give it a try. And a few months later, I had my first story completed, a 14-chapter Doctor Who AU.

 After that, I had the writing bug and I haven't been able to stop coming up with ideas and working to put them into words!

Story Recommendations

Which of your stories are your favorite?

It is honestly so hard to choose. I'm only going to choose completed works, because I always love the WIPs I'm working on. So, let's see: You Bring Me Home is one of them, because it was so fun to just jump into a sexy vacation romp with some playful kink exploration for James Conrad (Kong: Skull Island). With Brooding Wings was my first attempt at a vampire story using multiple Tom Hiddleston characters, and I really enjoyed playing with the dynamics of different personalities and settings in that world. 

 In A Restless World Like This Is is another, because I had such a great time writing a fluffy love story for Steve Rogers and an older OFC. It started as a spite project because of someone's objections to older characters and turned into such a lovely experience. It was one of the easiest I've ever written in terms of how quickly it flowed from my brain through my fingers. I'd loved writing for Loki (An Excellent Suggestion was my first Loki story, and my first time writing smut) and for Bucky (We Are All Victims of Physics Sometimes was my first dip into capturing Bucky's quiet reserve and depth of emotion).

I honestly could go on and on about stories but would only sound more conceited.

Which story are you most proud of?

I think A Pursuit of the Heart. It was my first time writing in the Regency/Georgian era, and I did a TON of research for it. It was also my first novel-length story, and I didn't even know if I could take on something that big or write a historical romance convincingly, in a way that felt era-appropriate and true. I was so proud of the finished product.

Which of your stories do you think is the most underrated?

Let Your Heart Be Light, a Bucky/OFC story with a Christmas theme - its companion piece, Kissing The New Year In, also didn't get much traction. But I loved writing them!

Someone is new to reading your stories, which story/stories should they read first?

It depends on what actors and characters they like, really, as well as if they like smut or fluff or both. For a smutty one-shot, I'd recommend An Excellent Suggestion (which has a one-shot sequel). For a swoonier longer fic with smut, I'd recommend either You Bring Me Home or my fake relationship Steve Rogers fic The One Thing You Can't See. 

For fluff, An Unforeseen Outcome is a Loki one-shot with both fluff and a little emotional hurt/comfort. Interestingly, I've written more not-smut fluff for Loki than for any other character. I think I just want him to find connection and love and acceptance so much. 

And if you are a fan of historical romance, I'd recommend either my Thomas Sharpe AU A Compromising Situation, or if you like your fics with a healthy dose of angst, Beside Us When Beauty Brightens, my William Buxton (Return to Cranford) story about what happens after he loses Peggy.

Which Story did you do the most research for?

A Pursuit of the Heart, since it was my first one set in the Georgian era and I had a lot of catching up to do! I research for most of my stories, and definitely for my multi-chapter stories. Even if they're contemporary, I still look up resorts, locations, restaurants and local foods, things to do, etc. I can't help it. It's like I'm addicted to research.

Which Story was the easiest to write?

For a multi-chapter fic, In A Restless World Like This Is. For a one-shot, probably my Loki Christmas fluff All I Want For Christmas Is You.

The Writing Process

What is your favorite part of writing?

When a scene I've had in my head just flies out of my fingers and onto the page, and I can read it back and think, "YES! That's just how I wanted it!"

What is your least favorite part?

When my brain is too scattered and unfocused to actually allow me to do any writing.

Describe your style in 1 to 2 sentences.

Well-researched stories that use the information to make you feel like you're there and that incorporate sweetness into even the smuttiest scenario. Also, food porn, and porn porn.

Who are some of your writing idols and/or influences?

For published novels, Mary Balogh and Sabrina Jeffries are two of my favorite historical romance writers, and I think that reading them has helped to make my writing better. In terms of fic authors (some of whom are also published), @nildespirandum​ and @caffiend-queen were two of the first I read in the Tom/Loki fandom and their excellent quality and intriguing plots are an inspiration, even if I will never be able to write plots as twisty as theirs. Also, reading @yespolkadotkitty​'s stories helped me push myself to get better at setting scenes and at incorporating the various senses into stories, because she is so good at both of those things and so much else.

What programs do you use to write and/or edit?

I use Google Docs. I have also been dancing around buying Scrivener for an original novel I plan to write and shop around, so I'll be doing that soon.

Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Plotter, for sure. My brain would implode if I tried to pants my stories.

Do you write RPF or not?

I have a few chapters of a Tom Hiddleston RPF in draft form but haven't proceeded with it. I'd kind of like to write a Pedro Pascal RPF one-shot. I love reading RPF but feel odd about writing it for some reason.

Who is your favorite character to write and why?

Again with the tough questions! It might be Loki, because he is such a chameleon and there are so many hidden depths to him. I really want to write some multi-chapter Loki stories, because so far I have done one-shots and one 3-chapter short fic. I'd like to explore a longer character arc for him.

What do you think are your writing strengths?

Authenticity because of my research, realistically depicting emotions, and writing in a style that feels genuine to the setting and era.

What do you struggle with?

PLOT. I do think that there is plenty of room for all kinds of stories, and I like to tell stories about relationships. But I would like to get better at adding outside conflict and other types of plot to my stories.

Favorite Trope?

It's so hard to choose between There Was Only One Bed and Fake Relationship. I think those are my top two.

What is the best piece of writing advice you have heard?

Write something. Anything. Even if you think it's crap, get your first draft done, because you can always go back and rewrite something that's bad and make it better. Also, if you're stuck on your WIP, write something else - a piece of another story or one-shot, a description of something you saw, a character profile, a bit of personal journaling. Keep writing and don't let a temporary roadblock turn into a long-term one.

What would you say to a new fanfic writer starting out?

It's hard when something you wrote doesn't get a lot of attention, especially when you love it. We share stories in the hopes that other people will discover and enjoy them, but you have to at least partly do it for your own satisfaction, or it will get pretty discouraging if the likes/kudos, comments, and reblogs just don't happen.

What is a random bit of research you have not managed to work into a fic yet?

Ladies' drawers (underwear) were not commonly worn until the mid-1800s. They were thought to be gentlemen's garments and it was thus vulgar for a lady to wear them. Yes, ladies of the Georgian (incl. Regency) era were generally commando beneath their skirts, petticoats, and shifts. But that was still a lot of layers.

Any goals or WIPs you want to share?

My goal is to write an original novel (series) set during the Napoleonic Wars. My hope is to get it researched, written, and put in final draft form so that I can send query letters out before the end of 2021.

This or That

Fluff or Angst

Fluff AND Smut

Reader Insert or  OC

Canon Divergent or AU

Pepsi or Coke (Neither: Cherry Coke Zero)

Coffee or Tea (Neither: Cocoa)

Sweet AND Savory

And that is it, until next week, remember to check out the masterlist here.  And your new fav fic is just around the corner!  Until next time, toodles!

[epicstuckyficrecs]

Weekly Recap | August 10-16th 2020

Complete

💙 With Only You by brucespringsteen (Time Travel | 47K | Explicit): Steve, semi-retired and still a bastard who doesn’t follow rules, touches a cube that sends him to 1938, eighty-six years in the past. He takes it well. Bucky, twenty-one and baby-faced, takes it even better.

Forgive, Yet Never Forget by Kalee60/ @kalee60​ (Post-Endgame | 8K | Explicit): Steve Rogers was a broken man. He'd failed to keep his friends alive, had lived through the snap, the blip, Thanos, whatever that torrid time of his life full of blood, fear and pain had been. Yet the one good thing to come out of the worst years of his life - he had Bucky back. And a head full of issues along with it.Issues that meant the only way Steve could get out of his overbearing mind is to fall into oblivion by paying one night stands, use people he never had to see again, people he couldn't let down.So what happens when Bucky accosts him after a mission and wants answers, wants only to help Steve? Can an old weary supersoldier, whose self worth is nonexistent, start to heal and find happiness, when he truly believes he doesn't deserve it?

Love Me, Hold Me, Squeeze Me by musette22/ @musette22​, paperstorm/ @paper-storm​ (Evanstan PRF, PWP | 4,5K | Explicit): Chris grabs his junk when he's anxious. Sebastian notices.

Closer by musette22/ @musette22​ (Evanstan RPF | 5K | Teen): The relief that floods Sebastian at seeing Chris alive and well is intense, lifting some of that debilitating weight that’s been pressing down on his chest all evening, but it’s short lived. Because Chris looks... Well, he looks unfairly gorgeous as always, with his beard and his soft, cerulean eyes, but he also looks nervous and just a little bit shifty.The feeling of unease grows when Chris shoots him a smile that’s tense around the edges and says, “Hey, Seb. Can we talk for a moment?”

💙 a question of worth by Deisderium/ @deisderium​ (Post-Endgame | 30K | Teen): In which Steve and Bucky return the Infinity Stones, and return to a world drastically changed from the one Bucky left five years ago, and Bucky has to struggle with the knowledge that his best friend held Mjölnir, and at least briefly had the power of a god. So where does that leave an ex-brainwashed assassin?

Adorably awkward by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 32K | Explicit): The one where Bucky uses Steve’s car window as a mirror and Steve can appreciate the view…

Extra Sugar, 32. the future by luninosity/ @luninosity​ (Evanstan, Dom/Sub AU | 112K | Explicit): Sebastian's feeling anxious about a change. Chris will always want to help. (Part 6 of 💙Like Sugar (Spell It Out))

💙 Songbird by chicklette/ @chicklette​ (Singer Bucky, Fake relationship | 66K | Explicit): At 43, James Barnes is a washed up old man. He’s got a dozen Grammys in the hall closet, an agent that can’t get him a deal, a decade-old case of writer’s block, a moody teen-aged daughter, and the gorgeous actress Natasha Romanova for an ex-wife. Enter Steven Grant Rogers, struggling twenty-something, orphan, and someone who has no idea who Barnes is. The two men meet by accident, doing nothing more than passing the time in a quiet bar. But when a pap gets a shot of the two men embracing, Bucky takes it as a chance to finally come out as bisexual, and his agent makes him a proposition: Ten new songs and one very sweet boyfriend will get him a new record deal that will maybe, just maybe put him back on top. Now all he has to do is write the songs, convince the kid, and not fall in love. Should be easy, right?

💙 Heirloom by 2bestfriends/ @addyetc​ (Royalty AU, Arranged Marriage | 21K | Explicit): King Steven Grant Rogers of Aphekion is only 20 years old. He relies on the wisdom of his advisors, the strength and honesty of his people, and the love and kindness his mother left to him. He wants nothing more than to honor them all by bringing peace to his kingdom. So much has been sacrificed already. If he must sacrifice his hope for love, then so be it.

WIP

💙 Querencia by SinpaiCasanova (Royalty, ABO AU, Tudor Era | 4/6 | 14K | Explicit): “Oh no, Mother, not another courting ceremony,” Steve protests, a whine slipping into his voice that he’d be rather embarrassed about if anyone other than Sarah ever heard it. “I beg you, no more. I can’t go through that puffed up charade again, being paraded before a dozen worthy Omegas like I’m some prime cut of meat. She probably won’t even like me.” “Well, Steven,” she gently corrects, “she is a he, and the only one you’d be ‘paraded’ in front of.”

💙 Sergeant Barnes and Colonel Rogers: Lessons in Lust, Longing and Inappropriate Erections. by darter_blue/ @darter-blue​ (Shrunkyclunks | 3/4 | 17K | Explicit): Bucky Barnes is a decorated (though young) Sergeant in the United States Army, a Ranger with the 75th regiment, a sniper of unparalleled skill; he still expects his first day as an Avenger to be challenging. He is not at all prepared for the greatest challenge to be one hot as fuck, steely eyed, Colonel Rogers. More specifically, he is not expecting the greatest challenge to be keeping his dick under control whenever Colonel Rogers, with his broad shoulders and his authoritative command and his fucking thick, gorgeous beard, enters into Bucky’s immediate vicinity.

💙 (i will) leave a light on by crinklefries/ @spacerenegades​ (Post-Endgame, Canon Divergent | 4/7 | Explicit): Twice a day, every day, Steve lights the lantern at the top of the lighthouse.One day, every year, a door opens and Bucky steps through. This is the story of how Steve and Bucky reclaim all of the years they've lost and what Valhalla means to someone who's willing to wait for it.

💙 Tender is the Ghost by Hark_bananas/ @harkbananas​ (Post-WS | 8/12 | 97K | Explicit): This thought is uncontrollably followed by another one: I’m not alone anymore. He looks over his shoulder, through the kitchen door, to where Bucky is sitting at his usual place at the head of the dining table, and he feels an unconstrainable smile breaking out across his face, the barest hint of threatening tears along its bright edge. Bucky is still looking past Steve’s left ear, but slowly, gingerly, one side of his mouth quirks up. Steve feels giddy, he wants to shout, or faint, or something to relieve the carbonated pressure that is bubbling up inside of him. Instead, he laughs, short and cheerful, and opens the oven door. (Part 2 of Tender is the Ghost)

💙 sharpen your teeth (tell yourself that it’s just business) by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid​ (Post-WS | 1/2 | 8K | Explicit): He stays because it’s safe, because Hydra cannot get to him here, because Rogers—still waiting for his dead friend to claw his way out of the Winter Soldier’s broken psyche—will go to the ends of the earth to find him if they do. So he watches Rogers watch him, and Barnes doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but he knows he has found it the first time he sees Rogers’s eyes drop down to his lips and dart guiltily away. Barnes pretends he doesn’t notice and unlike Rogers, he can act. The Red Room made him well, and Hydra could ruin only so much. He changes his act, a few weeks in. He starts looking back.

💙 Revenance by JJK/ @trenchcoatsandtimetravel​, SinpaiCasanova (The Old Guard AU/The Song of Achilles AU | 4/? | 11K | Mature): And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Or, the one where Steve and Bucky are immortal and used to be known as Achilles and Patroclus.

Re-read

Leg Day by Brokenpitchpipe (Shrunkyclunks | 12K | Explicit): Or: The one where Sam is Bucky's long-suffering roommate, Bucky is a hot mess of a millennial, and Hot Steve spends far too much time on the Lat Pull-Down machine.

the sound of rain on tin by luninosity/ @luninosity​ (Stucky & Evanstan Crossover | 3/4 | Teen): Okay, Bucky thought. He could deal with sudden universe-hopping. He’d seen weirder things. Hell, he himself probably counted as a weirder thing, brainwashed cryogenically frozen former legendary assassin and all.Chris, who looked like Steve, but who wasn't Steve, stared at him some more.

[holyhellpod]

Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving. 

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold. 

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show. 

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

 I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit. 

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins. 

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art. 

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural,  he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag. 

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living. 

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism. 

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to. 

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it. 

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light. 

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line. 

 Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence. 

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade. 

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome.  I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else. 

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half. 

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves. 

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome. 

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight. 

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer. 

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it. 

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace. 

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar. 

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says: 

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.  

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean. 

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to. 

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas.  Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna. 

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life. 

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs. 

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.” 

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it. 

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do. 

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another. 

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it. 

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours. 

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay? 

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas. 

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure. 

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar! 

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.” 

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/