#i have so many fics that sound excellent in open tabs and the marked for later list i can't wait!!

[becausebuckley]

michelle's buddie fic recs: week 37!

another week, another list of brilliant brilliant fics <3 i hope you find some new favourites here!!

this is a mix of fics with all ratings and some include NSFW content. please take a look at both the ratings and the fic tags before reading!

if you come across something you like in this list, remember to show some love to the author by leaving kudos and a comment!

descendants of cyrano | letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/@letmetellyouaboutmyfeels | 55.3k | E

People have their characters romance each other all the time while playing Dungeons & Dragons. There's deep meaningful monologues and sometimes some crying. It's normal. "Normal" is definitely not the word for whatever Buck and Eddie are inflicting on the rest of the 118. i reread this for maybe the third time this week? idk the point is i've read it multiple times and it continues to be one of my favourite fics <3 the d&d bits are brilliant and i love buddie and the 118 friendships and everything!!

dreamverse | clairo_shade | 3.4k | T

If anyone asks—it’s Karen’s fault. That’s what Eddie is going to make sure is written on his gravestone when this colossal lapse in judgment ends with him burying himself six feet under. this is technically a double rec cause the sequel is also great!! fluff and humour is one of my favourite tags and this captures both perfectly <3

family (portrait) | ProsperDemeter/@prosperdemeter2 | 45.1k | T

realizing that the family that you need has been beside you all along. i love the family dynamics here, both the complex buckley family ones and the maddie & buck & jee & chim & eddie stuff. brilliant fic!

i'm hearing secret harmonies | Chash | 18k | T

When the firefighter walks into Eddie's coffeeshop, Eddie immediately knows two things about him: he's not human, and he's the love of Eddie's life. i love witch eddie so much!! the diaz family here is so lovely as well <3

life like a face between your palms | hattalove/ @hattalove | 9.6k | M

in which eddie is sweet, and buck is a little undone by it. sweet eddie my absolute most beloved <3 the tooth-rotting fluff tag has never been more accurate!

a place in the clouds | lesbianrobin/@lesbianrobin | 5.1k | G

the Diaz family make their way home. the ultimate eddie and chris moving to la roadtrip fic <3 i love their dynamic here so much!!

to hold you up | selfmythology| 4.6k| T

Five times Evan “Buck” Buckley cared for someone, and one time someone cared for him. i love the different friendships highlighted here and the buddie scene is so lovely!!

whatever you knead i'm just a massage away | znks/@znks | 3k | E

if your best friend doesn't reveal his secret physical therapist skills to help you out then what's the point what's the point indeed?? there's something so special and intimate about massage fics and this hits the spot perfectly <3

[dontcallmecarrie]

Only The Names Change

Yes, it’s another MCU/WtNV crossover fic idea/minific-I-might-mess-with-later. Last one kind of snowballed into its own AU as I was writing it, but it wasn’t the only one I’d had in mind. Still not caught up yet, and I’m probably going to need to brush up on my stuff get it right later.

This one, hopefully, is a lot more focused on crack than anything else [...then again, we’ve seen how that’s worked out before, so.]

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe [movies], Welcome to Night Vale [podcast]

Warnings: unreliable narrator [isn’t that familiar], everything Night Vale-related [Librarian-caliber gore, dystopian themes, cosmic/Lovecraftian horror, etc.], some mental health issues because this is Tony we’re talking about, even if this fic is meant to be pure, self-indulgent crack more than anything else.

12/2018 EDIT: removed the cut so it actually crossposts correctly. 

In which Tony Stark is a Night Vale Community College alumnus.

It sounds very improbable, sure. Maybe Maria also hailed from Night Vale in this one, or maybe it was Jarvis. Since it’s the least convoluted option I can come up with, let’s roll with it, shall we? 

Perhaps he entered right out of high school, and his family [read: his mother] told everyone he valued his privacy and didn’t say where he was, or he did go to MIT, but also took a few classes at a satellite campus a train ride away. 

Tony doesn’t talk about it much; it’s not an accredited college, nobody would take his AA degree in Computer and Fire Sciences seriously, compared to his accomplishments at MIT, but he’s doing the former for fun while the latter’s more to try to impress Howard for once than anything else. [Not that it works, but still.]

But truth be told? He’s prouder of his NVCC credentials, really. 

Because sure, it’s impressive that he graduated summa cum laude from MIT, but do you know how hard it is to pass Secret English 112, when the only study place was in the library, infested with Librarians? C’mon. Not to mention Bio 351, because killing his evil clone had gotten him excellent marks for the final, though he still considered JARVIS his greatest achievement, considering all his other classmates’ AI had only wiped out the local electrical grid while JARVIS did it for the tri-state area, and with style. [He was so proud.] 

Even if there’d been a few points docked for the slightly screwy morality codex, but really Professor Gwozdecke was such a hardass about the most banal things. [Murder and disembowelment wasn’t JARVIS’ go-to option, which was more than could be said for the rest of the class, he’d deserved full points dammit!] 

He graduates, makes regular donations of shredded lettuce for the Thing in the Earth Sciences building, and never sets foot on campus as it becomes unknowable ten minutes after he gets his diploma, as per usual for Night Vale Community College alumni. 

Jarvis and his mother are so proud, and Tony’s very happy he took Communications 101: Introduction to Talking to the Dead, even if he’s not very good at it. 

It’d originally been for the Social Sciences credits only, but then shit went down and...well. You get the idea. He only did the one class, so he can’t raise the dead, but short conversations with people he’s got close emotional ties to? He can do. [So Howard’s a no-go.]

...I did say the was cracky self-indulgence, just roll with it.

Tony moves on with his life, and canon ensues for the most part. 

His AA degree means he’s got a slightly skewed take on things, which...is a mixed bag, truth be told. 

On the one hand, the edge he has on all-nighters and cramming in libraries serves him well [even if he gets odd looks for the titanium spork, and his bag feels oddly light without the machete he normally has when entering libraries], and he’s well-equipped to handle any fires his project might start. 

On the other hand, he gets weird looks for the oddest things, like his penchant for explosions [...he did get a degree in Computer and Fire Sciences, after all], his reaction to librarians [he’d never encountered Librarians outside of NVCC, but best be prepared and all that], and apparently JARVIS was ‘unusually advanced’ outside Night Vale standards and he’d had to get creative in his excuses to keep people from asking too many questions. 

Life goes on.

He still becomes the Merchant of Death, Happy, Pepper, and Rhodey are used to his quirks [for the most part; the ceremonial bloodstones he’d gotten at graduation, he kept hidden for obvious reasons], and overall everything goes as per usual. 

Afghanistan still happens, he still gets the arc reactor, though here the explosions he makes are bigger, and Yinsen’s impressed with his poker face and pain tolerance. [This was nothing like dealing with Librarians, really.] 

He breaks out as per canon, because while he took Lit 172: Analyzing the Necronomicon Through a Non-Euclidean Lens, summoning Cthulhu was most definitely a last-ditch strategy, and he’d gotten a C in Murder Ballads so that was out too.

...crap what is it with my keeping tabs on what Yinsen does next? I mean:

-Maybe he’d been expecting death, but not for his fellow captive to somehow keep him alive with an expired thing of Spam and some duct tape, 

or 

-Maybe he still dies, but Tony has a final goodbye later on, and lets Yinsen rest and only keeps him updated about the major highlights he knows Yinsen’d appreciate, like the privatized world peace thing.

He gets back, canon still ensues, for the most part.

Except here, Obadiah Stane vanishes.

Because Tony’s been brushing up on his old textbooks, and while he’s never set foot in NVCC since his graduation, he’s kept his notes [albeit locked in a titanium safe ringed with garlic and old Sharpies to keep everything contained]. Tony’d been researching ways to get rid of the shrapnel without involving eldritch beings or evil clones [once had been enough, thank you very much], and had been mid-invocation when Obie had decided to try for his arc reactor.

...as it turns out, JARVIS was not happy about that. and Tony didn’t know just how the hell an AI was able to open a portal to what was presumably a Void or something similar, but he wasn’t asking. [But then, computer science was an arcane thing, so.]

Time passes, canon ensues. 

Turns out Bio 351′s still relevant; cloning himself was only the highlight of it, but there’s other stuff they’d covered that is still saving his life decades later. The poison immunity thing was very useful, to be certain. 

the idea of inventing new elements isn't anything new, really. This time, though, he’s not playing with dark matter, so it’s something he can recreate without using bloodstone circles or a slightly modified mass gigatrometer. 

Vanko isn’t that scary, and neither’s Natasha, not after having studied in places infested with Librarians. Impressive, sure, but nowhere near as scary as getting lost in the Earth Sciences building after dark, or not having enough coffee when entering the computer labs.

Nick Fury’s wondering just what the hell Tony’s messing with, because for being Howard’s kid, he’s...something else. And alarmingly blasé about dealing with assassins, too. 

Time passes, canon still mostly ensues.

...let’s skip to the fun parts, shall we?

The Avengers assemble, and Tony’s both having the time of his life but also headdesking and going ‘shit I should’ve taken that one class even if it was optional’ while everyone’s just staring because some of what Tony’s saying is making even less sense than normal. Iridium vaguely makes sense, but just where does the temporal-spatial classification of the moon even fit in?

Bruce can tell something’s off, and wonders where the smell of smoke comes from. [Oops.] 

Steve’s wondering at the maniac look in his eyes, because he’d seen Howard do his thing but Tony was the embodiment of entropy, it seemed like.

Natasha and Coulson are same as they were in Live Through the Rain, just chill and rolling with it and nothing fazes them. Of course Tony’s cell phone spontaneously combusted and is still functional. Of course.

Fire Sciences, remember? He’s a genius, there’s no way he didn’t have fun with that. 

The alien army’s new, but then Tony’d heard the police-sci majors’ dark mutterings about Blood-Space Wars and ‘who’s the dumbass who drafted the third treaty and why’d it involve so much coffee creamer?’ in the commuter’s lounge, and it’s pretty easy to get an idea as to what went down. 

Oh, sure, it’s new, but still nowhere near the Librarians’ scale, really. JARVIS is being quietly terrifying in the corner, and Tony’s so proud of how he’d managed to possess that one spacewhale. [He’s growing up so fast.] 

...kinda ran out of steam at this point, in keeping with canon. Also, you guys know how much I like good team dynamics, so:

Basically, the entire encounter still wasn’t as bad as Finals Week, and Tony’s already been resigned for years at the prospect of intergalactic war [those political-sci majors really, really hated a professor, because turns out a war set during an indeterminate period in time and space was a pain in the ass to cover when talking peace treaties, who knew?] plus...well. You get the idea. 

The events of Phase 2 in general get derailed by the Night Vale Community College Class Reunion, feat. RSVPs sent in envelopes with no addresses and sealed with pine resin, Tony going to sleep in New York and waking up in an unknown location in the middle of a desert, monsters great and terrible [ah, Librarians. One of the things Tony hadn’t missed], and an inordinate amount of trees. 

Maybe there was a plus one attachment he’d left blank, and maybe someone who’d caught sight of it went ‘hey what’s this?’ and touched it before Tony could burn the invite, and Tony’s really regretting the life choices that had Steve also waking up to a barren landscape with nothing more than what he had in his pockets to help him fight for survival. 

Or maybe it’s Clint who didn’t sign up for this, or Tony finds out just how well the Hulk does against Librarians when Bruce catches sight of one, or...well.

Oh, hey, it’s the Void again. Just as dark and incomprehensible as ever. Nice. 

Getting home’s a trip. Getting the Earth ready isn’t, because, again, unknown war during an unknown period of time, Tony’s low-key been on it for decades now.

...umm. Oh, one last thing. Canon got derailed miles back, kinda, but if somehow, someway that one scene in Siberia happens, it’d go down like this:

Tony doesn’t lose it. 

This isn’t because he’s a saint, isn’t because he’s “the bigger man” or anything; it’s because once upon a time, he took Communications 101: Introduction to Talking to the Dead, and while it’s not the best he was able to talk to his mother, and got the story from her, decades ago.

...that being said, I’m not saying he decks Steve because the asshole had the nerve to say ‘hey why aren’t you telling me things’ while keeping what would have otherwise been a huge secret from someone who professed to be a friend. 

Nobody’s sure how the computer caught on fire, either. Or why it’s burning green, or why nothing’s putting it out and all that’s left is the crumbled remains of what was once a bunker.

[...you can tell how Tony channels his anger here, can’t you.]

...shit this is going to be its own one shot dammit brain cut it out already

[mittensmorgul]

I'm so sorry if this sounds ignorant, and I'm sure you're tired of explaining it, but do views or "hits" on Ao3 mean anything? Because i'll see the posts about authors needing kudos and comments (which i understand completely) but i'll also see the view count and i'm like "but it's got so many hits, just go by that too!" So what goes into an author truly knowing how well they're doing?

Hi there! And yeah, I’ve explained how this works before, but I’m always happy to explain it again. Because it bears repeating. :)

Hits on AO3 mean very little. Someone clicks through to the fic, reads the tags and summary, maybe the first few paragraphs of a novel-length fic, and then nopes out without finishing. It still registers a hit.

Writing a multi-chapter fic posted in weekly installments that has a significant following? Yeah, hits are also meaningless here, because every time you post a new installment and all your dedicated readers click through to read the next chapter? They each register new hits. They’re not UNIQUE viewers to the entire fic, yet it can still look that way in the hit counter. And if it’s a 50 chapter fic that posts over the course of a whole year? The “compound” hits really start to add up, despite each of those unique readers only being able to leave 1 kudos (albeit multiple comments, if they so desire).

If something we post generates a thousand hits but only 100 kudos, it can start to feel like a lot of readers may not have bothered to read to the end, you know? If I make it to the end of a fic, I hit the kudos button. It takes literally one second, and in my mind it’s the equivalent of saying, “Thank you for writing this and posting it for free for my enjoyment.”

I personally don’t have the “false hits equivalency” problem that writers who post WIP’s do, because I always post complete works. Even when I’ve tried to post serially, I end up giving up after a few days and just going ahead and posting the entire thing. I tried to do that with Ultraviolet, posting a chapter a day, and lasted five whole days before just posting the rest all at once. I have no patience for drawing things out unnecessarily. :P

As a result, the hits count on it are artificially inflated:

2269 hits as of today, when I posted it back at the end of June. But heck, there’s more than 10% kudos-to-hits ratio, so even considering that I know a number of people had been reading along as I posted the first five chapters, that’s still a pretty decent average. Believe it or not, that’s considered to be fairly excellent as a hits-to-kudos ratio.

Now on to the thing I just posted a few days ago, Dean’s Days Off. I posted it all at once (note the posting date):

That’s a lot of hits, considering I can assume that most of them are not redundant, with the same readers clicking back through to read a new chapter. Still, even working under the assumption that A LOT of those are unique hits from different people, I’m left with the assumption that less than 20% of them actually read all the way to the end, because of the kudos.

This theory works FOR NOW, because this is a new story. I doubt many people have had a chance (even if they loved it and intend to read it again someday-- which is just wishful thinking on my part, but whatever) have had a chance to go back and read it again already, you know? So these are largely most probably original hits. But over time, there may be a fair few people who return to read it again and CAN’T leave kudos again. The hits-to-kudos ratio will inevitably drop over time.

Plus there’s also the factor in the other direction-- readers who click through and then download the story (I always do this with fic I love, partly because it’s easier to read on my kindle, but also because I’ve see too much fic I love get taken down by the authors, and I like to make sure I have a copy in case that ever happens). I have fic I’ve reread NUMEROUS times, but the author has no way of knowing how much I adore their writing in that case UNLESS I EXPLICITLY TELL THEM.

AO3 doesn’t keep statistics for downloads. Unless a reader tells me, I have no idea that they may have downloaded my story to read again. It doesn’t even generate another hit in that case, you know?

In any case, kudos, comments, OR hits-- none of them is a perfect gauge for readership. Hits may be meaningless. I think 3 of the hits for T&S were generated by me-- one of which was me noping out within a page or two of starting because there was no way in hell I was gonna keep reading, and two of which were unlabeled links to the effect of, “OMG I JUST READ THIS THING AND I NEED A MOMENT TO RECOVER,” which is an intriguing sort of post where the words “THIS THING” were a link to it... I had no idea, but lo and behold, I generated a “hit” to it. >.>

I’ve clicked on fic recs that from the description in the post sounded right up my alley, only to see something in the tags on AO3 that made me nope out of reading, or got a short way in to the story before realizing it just wasn’t my thing and closing out. All of that generates hits. Meaningless, meaningless hits.

I have opened fic, decided to “Mark For Later” so I can open it again and read it when I’m in the right mood, or when I have time to devote to it, or whatever. I have A LOT of fic Marked For Later. Still, opening it to mark it and add it to my list generates a hit. It’ll generate another hit when I do eventually go back and read it. Possibly generating another hit when I open it yet again trying to remember if I’ve read it... 

Or the worst-- I’ve had the thing open in a tab for two weeks hoping to find the time to read it, and every time Chrome refreshes the page (because Chrome does that) it generates a new hit... I kinda feel guilty about that...

Hits are ultimately meaningless.

Kudos at least have SOME meaning. A unique reader read the entire thing, got all the way to the end, and felt good enough about reading it to hit what essentially amounts to the THANK YOU NICE WRITER PERSON button.

Some people are willing to spend a little more time writing a comment. Anything from a “Thank you for writing this” to “Oh gosh I love this story, and xyz was my favorite!” all the way to leaving a running commentary on every chapter or a five paragraph book review at the end. Or heck, just an incoherent keysmash with a bunch of exclamation points.

Or one of my personal favorites, “I just read this again and can’t leave more kudos, so have this

I don’t understand the resistance to clicking the kudos button if you read the entire story and derived any enjoyment from it whatsoever. If you’re embarrassed about it, you can always log out of AO3 and leave kudos anonymously. No one will ever know it was you. :P

But I’ve had people ask me this before, wondering why they should even BOTHER hitting Kudos, and it’s like... you read this entire story, for the low low cost of zero dollars, and can’t be fussed to even click the Instant Thank You Button? That’s... shocking and frustrating as a writer. Some of my longer fic may have taken me HUNDREDS of hours to write, edit, etc. And it doesn’t merit half a second of time to click a button. I mean, sure, Dean’s Days Off is kinda short compared to some of my other work, but it still represents about 80 hours of my life. I spent about 80 hours working on that story. I spent several hundred hours working on Revenge of the Subtext. And even more than that working on Around the World in 24 Days. That’s a lot of hours. Can I get half a second of your time as an acknowledgement that it was worth it?

If I make it to the end of a story of any length, that’s automatically kudos. Job well done, Writer Person. You have suitably entertained me.

I admit that I am still personally weirded out by leaving comments, but I do try and force myself to, especially if it’s a longer work. I get this OH GOSH PLEASE DON’T LOOK AT ME BUT YOU HAVE GIVEN ME FEEEEELINGS mentality about leaving comments. I turn into Dean Winchester and clam up. I TOTALLY GET THAT REACTION to leaving comments. That’s why the kudos button exists in the first place. No embarrassment required. Just a Thank You that writers can acknowledge in a measurable way. Unlike hits, which honestly we have no idea how many of them even read past the introduction let alone the entire story.

I wish there were some more accurate metric for calculating just how well received our works are, but really this is all we have. We don’t have bestseller lists. Our readers don’t have to pay for our work. Leaving kudos or liking our tumblr posts is great, and lets us know at least our followers appreciate what we’ve written. Leaving comments is fantastic because we can share the joy, answer questions, reply to theories y’all have about our stories (heck nothing is better to me than having someone meta-analyze my writing! I LOVE THAT AND WOULD LOVE TO SQUEE WITH JOY AT YOU!). Reblogging our tumblr posts is like the ultimate recommendation. It says not only someone read and enjoyed what we wrote, but wants other people to find the thing too.That’s how we find new readers, especially if the post ends up tagged with stuff like, “OMG THIS WAS SO EXCELLENT!” or whatever. Damn near makes my week. :P

But if we post something, even if it gets tons of hits, if no one bothers to hit the kudos button at the end, it can very quickly start to feel like maybe nobody ever read all the way to the end, so why even bother...

I probably shouldn’t have turned this into an essay, but since that seems to be my trademark, I guess I’ll just go ahead and post it...