#so within the week I stopped trying

[this-is-captain-handsome]

I reached the 30 tag limit LMAOO

Hi! I saw on one of your posts you said that you used to be a stucky shipper. I actually started off as a stony shipper but then absolutely fell in love with stucky but I like both . I was just wondering what made you "jump ship" on stucky lol. Sorry if this comes across as annoying or anything im just curious!

Hey! As you can see a couple of people have asked me this over the last couple of weeks and I’m really lazy and haven’t got around to responding yet, but the people deserve an answer so here we go. Before we start a quick disclaimer: I’ll only be talking about the ships themselves, not the communities or any of the discourse surrounding them. This is not a ship-bashing of any kind and please do not take it as such, it’s just my own personal experience surrounding these characters and these relationships. 

 Buckle your seatbelts kids, this is a long one.

I first got into Marvel c. 2015. I’m European so I’d never really watched any marvel movies before that, I watched Age of Ultron on a plane and remember being vaguely aware the Steve/Tony was a thing (what is pretty interesting is that to this day I have no clue where that knowledge came from) but was mostly just excited by the superhero stuff. I then got home and watched The Winter Soldier and fell in love. I love the Winter Soldier, it’s probably still one of my favourite marvel movies (it got kicked out of its top spot by Black Panther last year unfortunately) and to me no other marvel movie could hold a torch to it at the time. So I came onto tumblr, searched up The Winter Soldier and was just inundated with Stucky stuff, as expected. I rolled with it, got invested just from constant exposure (it was also around the height of the Stucky ship) and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I was super into Stucky for almost six months and was pretty much your average shipper, I didn’t understand stevetony, loved Steve Rogers, was close to creating a Stucky sideblog wit some ridiculous pun as my username, I was gone over this ship.

Then one day, I sat down and read the man on the bridge by boopboop on ao3. You’ve almost definitely heard of it, but it was the most popular fic in the Steve/Bucky tag on ao3 at the time (for some reason I had just never got around to reading it until then, it was long and I didn’t have the stamina I have now). It was your pretty standard Stucky fic, Steve gets Bucky back, they have to deal with his trauma which results in Steve and Bucky declaring their long lost love for each other etc. etc. What was different about this fic, was that it was all told from Tony’s point of view, and since Steve and Tony were on the same team at that point, their dynamic was a huge part of the fic. And I found myself falling completely in love with Steve and Tony’s dynamic. I went back to the fic for this post (and god it is a good fic) and pulled up the first couple of chapters and instantly just found so many instances of that dynamic

(grade A stevetony arguing over each other’s safety with a side of flirting from Tony)

(Idk why but the image of Steve and Tony not going to sleep, but rather staying up and brewing coffee together was such a vivid one when I first read this fic, I still remember it to this day. )

(Tony picking Steve flowers while trying to desperately play off that he didn’t aka. Tony caring while trying desperately not to care)

(Everyone knowing that Steve would definitely come to Tony, apart from Tony himself.)

Now obviously, this is a stucky fic and I went into it knowing this, but I found when Steve and Bucky finally got together I felt honestly a bit bored, a bit cheated. I had no idea why at the time. I remember very clearly x-ing out of the fic at the end and feeling really uneasy, I came onto tumblr, went straight back into the Stucky tag and all was well.

When I next went back onto ao3, I started out with a couple of oneshots in the Stucky tag, but for some reason it wasn’t working for me anymore. I remember sitting there, a little bored, not at all invested in this relationship and just missing something. I figured I was probably missing Tony’s presence in the fic and so filtered in Tony Stark’s character tag. I read a few of those and all was well but I realised the same thing was happening as had happened in man on the bridge, the moment that Steve and Bucky got together, the fic lost something for me. Desperate at this point, and a little annoyed at myself I conducted an experiment and went into the Steve/Tony tag on Ao3 and as they say, the rest is history. If you go onto older posts on my main blog there’s a pretty drastic, almost overnight shift c. January 2016. I have to admit, I expected Civil War to be a conversion so I enjoyed stevetony without consequence for five months, while still labelling myself as a Stucky shipper because I expected to be pulled back to Stucky after civil war, the reality was that somehow I came out of civil war shipping stevetony harder than ever before. From there, I spent two years reading my way through the stevetony tag on ao3 and finally set up this blog in 2018, with a really obscure reference as my username and it’s been stevetony til I die ever since.

I just couldn’t read Stucky anymore. That’s what I mean when I say on this blog that stevetony has ruined me for every other ship, because it has. Steve and Tony’s firecracker dynamic pulled me away from what was fast on its way to becoming my favourite ship in 2015, all because they had a bit of banter on the side in a fic. It’s kind of depressing really, the sort of hold that Steve and Tony’s dynamic has over me, 

It’s strange you say you fell in love with Stucky, I fell absolutely out of love with it. I have thought a lot about how I ended up falling into stevetony and why I was so drawn to them instead of Stucky in the first place and I think it all comes down the the story itself. To me, Steve and Bucky’s relationship carries much more weight as a friendship, I still have no doubt that Bucky is one of if not the most important person in Steve’s life, but having that be a lifelong friendship is way more powerful and impactful to me, (especially since what I know I misconstrued to be Steve’s obsession with Bucky is actually Steve’s obsession over the past. I’m not saying Bucky isn’t dear to Steve and he does want to obviously rescue him, but looking back on it there’s more to Steve’s obsession with Bucky than just love, it’s a fear of change and it’s him desperately trying to hold onto a past that’s gone.)

Conversely, I feel like adding a romantic element to Steve and Tony’s relationship enriches the story being told, if you look at something like civil war (either MCU or 616 tbh) in the context of Tony being desperately in love with Steve, it makes a lot more sense, especially with things like The Confession in 616 or the stuff brought up in that strange conversation in the conference room in the MCU. There’s lines from Steve like “I’m home/you gave me a home” or even straight up “he loved you” and his tormented behaviour throughout infinity war and endgame that just really makes you wonder, not to mention lines from others like “you two still gazing into each other’s eyes/sounds like both of you got into bed with the wrong people” and they did have to share a bed at Clint’s farm after all lol. The tragedy of their story is heightened if you look at it through the context of them being absolutely in love with each other, just never having actually got around to telling it to each other’s faces. This tragedy is heavily implied in The Oath/The Confession in 616 when they confess their deepest darkest secrets to the other’s comatose/dead bodies, and apparently it’s always been that they love the other person. Actually you could easily introduce a romantic element by making relatively few changes to the MCU, but that’s a post for another time (I have a long and comprehensive list in my notes app on how little you actually need to change to make that happen, it’s literally the matter of a few lines of dialogue and one major story change at the end of IM3, an interesting thought exercise to say the least).

Finally, there’s a quote that came up on my dash the day I made that fateful venture into the ao3 stevetony tag, “your soulmate isn’t someone who comes peacefully into your life. It is someone who makes you question things, changed your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone idealized, but an ordinary person, who managed to revolutionize your world in a second” to this day, it resonates so strongly with me about stevetony. It’s everything I love about this ship just compressed into a quote. 

So yeah it was basically a bunch of happy coincidences, but thank god it happened. As a writer, stevetony has taught me so much about character and dynamic, stuff that is honestly invaluable. When you have long fics that basically detail the day by day life of Steve and Tony post-civil war in rural Italy and consists of them sleeping, crying and working through their repressed feelings (looking at you @silkspectred ), it is the characters and their unique dynamic that drive the entirety of the story. Steve and Tony, in the hands of a compelling writer, can keep me hooked over a frankly embarrassing number of words. I still have a bit of a special place for Stucky in my heart really, it did start me out in marvel after all and it was one of my first ever ships, but your first love is only so good until you meet your true love, not to get all sappy but stevetony has completely destroyed my ability to ship anything else. I might get a bit flirtatious with some other ships, like sambucky (I still love Bucky, and I love Sam!), or the riverdale ships (beronica and jarchie or bust), or even the game of thrones crack ships (daensa til the day we die), but I’ll always come back to stevetony.

So yeah this escalated into a far longer post than I intended to make but I’ve never really spelled out on this blog how or why I ended up jumping Stucky to Stony when I know it’s usually the other way around. I guess it just comes down to stevetony catching me out when I least expected it, and never having let go of me since. 

[un-pearable]

why are 99% of crochet animal patterns just vague blobs. cmon. i know we can do better as a community. have you seen the shit the national parks service put out? yeah, the NPS. there are grandmas on the frontlines of the most formally accurate critters this side of a 3D printer. we can do better than orb with two triangles sewn on. we can make a more accurate cat. that is NOT what a turtle looks like. step AWAY from the axolotl

[chainsawworld]

Thinking about jason my friend jason I fucking love this guy he is just completely unstoppable when he decides to be my guy knows what he wants to do and he does it. Respect.

[vv-ispy]

Not that there's no issues with how Sailor Neptune and Uranus are written bc there are, yet their ruthlessness in the S arc is less about how they're mean as individual people (which.....fair they kinda are but that's besides this point) but rather a conflicting ideology between the inner senshi who value all life and each individual person, vs Uranus/Neptune who're about the greater good. S is about 'would you sacrifice one life to save the world' where the inner senshi is a resounding 'no absolutely not' and Uranus/Neptune is 'yes. without question'

This.....probably runs into some problems in an anime where the answer is The Power of Love and the third solution of 'love' exists, it makes them come off as antagonistic for no reason when Sailor Moon's whole thing 'I can solve this with love and understanding, always + I can reset the world' buuuuut UraNep aren't completely wrong in the end of S if Sailor Moon's powers aren't a given — the result of sparing Hotaru is shown and said result is the whole city died, and they only undied bc of Sailor Moon's reset

Anyway huge misconception to say that UraNep only cares about each other — though given how they're only nice to each other and mean to the inner senshi it's a fair assumption, but no they're just on the extreme side of The Greater Good, The Mission. Yes they're willing to kill innocent people to get the talismans, but those 'innocent people' included themselves given that Uranus' response to seeing Neptune holding a talisman is to shoot herself too (was there an element of 'don't leave me alone in this world' involved? Yeah. But she also had a whole speech about how it turned out they in fact held the talisman + the prior episodes 'The Mission' talk so). In fact, in their eyes they're not 'innocent' at all, that very episode contains the famous hands scene where Haruka worries her hands are solied by the mission, she doesn't like that she has to kill innocents even if it is for The World. And the two also already had an ideological discussion in the backstory episode of Haruka going 'so you don't care how many innocent people die in the process of defeating the enemy?' Michiru 'That's right. I don't' then admitting actually it haunts her deeply and the fact that Haruka is now gonna be a casualty hurts even more but she has to put it aside for the greater good of saving the rest of the world. Her dreams of becoming a violinist or wishes of Haruka not following her path don't matter when the fate of the world is on the line. UraNep will sacrifice themselves/those closest to them for the greater good of the world, not the other way around

(And yeah yeah there's that scene where some posessed guy claims that a certain container contains the soul of evil and smashing it will doom the world and when he questions why Michiru did it to save Haruka she responds with 'Don't you know? A world without Haruka isn't worth living in' but that's a joke! A bluff! She knew the guy was lying about the evil in the jar bc she tells Haruka right after not to be fooled and what the actual source of the posession is.)

[wherela]

I have gotten my hopes up that I will be getting engaged on Saturday, and I know that if it doesn't happen (it probably won't!) I'll be so so disappointed. But it's either this Saturday, or like.in a month.

[lambentplume]

i need to think about the Characters but i’m afraid goldmoon is going down the same route as makamar where i’m starting. to think that they’re boring

[daxite]

i hate it when there's a popular blogger on here who everyone wanks off, but they always add the most fucking useless and annoying comments on shit and most of the time you can't delete them because they'd delete all the other reblog comments as well, which were either actually useful or funny

[bmpmp3]

i shouldnt really be giving any hot takes on character design as someone who, despite having mild success in the adoptable scene in highschool, absolutely does NOT still got it when it comes to character designing (nowadays im just trying to do my best orz) but i do think one of the most important things with character design is that they serve the medium theyre in well.

like, a super exaggerated shape style triangle man with tiny legs a la mr incredible works great for an action cartoon movie but i dont know how good that style would work in a visual novel where you tend to only see the top half of the body. you wont be able to appreciate the tiny legs 😔

and as much as i goof on the visually cluttered anime boys in otome games and their odd fashion choices (kent from amnesia. at least 21 belts. 11 on one arm alone) i genuinely think they work for what they need to do, like all those fucking sashes and scarves and cords and capes and swishy things on the ikemen sengoku guys, painful to draw for me who wants to draw a goofy comic of them but WONDERFUL for an unanimated visual novel sprite, flowing clothes and hair adds a lot of movement to static images that you'll be staring at for 20-50 hours.

but of course on the visual novel/japanese adv game end of things u also have stuff like phoenix wright and the absolutely beautiful hotel dusk that tend to have blockier silhouettes than the fluttery flowing cloth and hair of like, a character in a bishoujo game from Key or something, but their sprites are animated which benefits from the blockier and (usually) less cluttered designs.

and theres still lots of exaggeration to be had to get very varied character designs, like the jake hunter games have a very grounded semi-realistic style but everyones posture and body types and expressions are pretty distinct, just the distinction is focused on the upper half of the body rather than the whole body like you would focus on with a comedy slapstick cartoon or like a comedy newspaper comic strip. okay its becoming increasingly obvious through what im talking about that i grew up in north america in the 00s-10s using deviantart where if ur cartoons didnt look like disney or pixar or like i dont know johnny test ur designs were considered not good enough so im still in that world. im still in that world. i hope the world is more open now

and something like the hotel dusk designs also would work well for drama or thriller comics - like i was also thinking about big sparkling shoujo manga designs and like. in a comic if ur like a garfield slapstick comedy u wanna look like a garfield, but if ur constantly doing closeups with serious emotion like a romantic drama shoujo manga, having big glittering expressive eyes and emphasizing the upper half of the character is pretty effective for the combination of medium and genre. i also think naoki urasawa's character designs would look so so good in a hotel dusk style game, that guy makes like the perfect thriller design, varied and diverse in shapes but so effective for a serious toned horror mystery thriller thing will lots of closeups of characters faces. i guess because i love serious and dramatic stories about people talking a whole lot i do gravitate towards this style of character design, where the emphasis is on the silhouette from the waist up LOL but it really goes to show that some character designs that may not fit the late 2000s comedy animation shape-based design philosophy have their own places where they thrive <- obvious thing everyone knows except for me who was on deviantart too much when i was 12

i think what im trying to say is i think big boobied super busy anime girl vtuber designs are fine, good even. i like em, i think they do the job and a lot of work goes into them. u only have a headshot/bust (heh) shown on screen 99% of the time u might as well make it with a bunch of particle effects and cool hairclips and lace and weird moving head wings or some shit. slap some sparkles on that thang

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[orphiicheartd]

Gotta love it when ppl make R00kvi| freak4freak like YESSSSS

[unnonexistence]

why do so many sci fi writers feel the need to make their fictional pandemic the Worst Disease Ever? you do not need a 95% mortality rate. you do not need half the world population to be infected within a week. you do not need to emphasize how much worse it is than the 1919 flu. it can be scary anyway i promise you

[peskyvinot]

drowning and spilling my life into the sewer by boiling in my hyperfixations. call that ar cane't fucjung do this anymore I need to sleep I need to eat and I'm literally in a cicle of illnesses but I as a person literally disappear when I indulge in my interest to tge point of like. disossiating. and strangely it's the safest I feel all week

[posingforcars]

I want to sleep!!

[k6tzie]

COD P☆RN LINKS | PT. 3

ghost: always so quiet and reserved, seeing you like this is refreshing. so humane having ur guts rearranged after doubting your lieutenants skills! dove, you're so needy. but luckily for you, you have a patient, big bf came back from prices' baby shower now u and si want a baby of ur own, but u can't wait:( doughy ass bouncing on his long cock that no one's sucked in over a year, thankfully now ur here! sharing the captains daughter with soap<3 trusting is hard for him, so once he has you, he doesn't wanna let go warm winter fuck with ur gentle boy price: once you taught olderbf!price how to make hotter videos, he thinks he's so much cooler but that old man lives within him💔i mean look how he's holding the phone! you feel a big, throbbing thing in your tummy, hopefully he doesn't press down on it D: when u took him to meet ur parents, you just looked too good not to fuck afterwards :( as much as he loves his quiet girls, he can't say no to a bubbly one night stand now can he he didn't wanna have to do this but this IS what bad girls get... dadsfriend!price taking you upstairs during the bbq. there's so many people so no one will hopefully notice ur gone... soap: totally something soap would do, fucking you levitating 😭 first time having a crush this intense, taking sneaky photos of you, drawing you in his sketchbook, leaving you little gifts anonymously - now that you gave him a chance, he's too shocked to even do anything! honestly his dream is hot gf x loser guy he's a messy boy who likes his sex quick! so so much cum dripping out, it's like your boys' in heaven filthy gym partner can't keep his hands to himself only one person can eat you this well when you're sick, soap! gaz: your drunk sex was so good, you won't forget it even when you're sober <3 appreciating that pussy with the love and tongue it deserves so wet and tight like ur ex boyfriend did nothing at all smh, must've been tiny deeeeep in ur gfs womb! pretty boy barely ever gets angry, but when price has been on his back the whole week, and now you're giving him attitude - he can't take it anymore! hot belly bulge - who would've thought from the serene, goofy guy? graves: ah, so THAT'S how you passed recruitment i see, interesting... what a baby, never been with a real woman. actually a very soft, sensual man. don't mistake him as rough cuz of how he acts at work lucky shadow of the week gets to record the barracks bunny and graves kept trying to draw milk out of you but he didn't realise not everyone just...lactates :(he can't stop rewatching this video y'all took, how your greedy pussy just swallows his dick whole :o purposely just teasing you so he can see u angry konig: an efficient way to wake up his beautiful baby✨ his cold tongue and your warm socks make an interesting contrast🤔 he caught you masturbating all by yourself and you didn't seem to reach ur full potential :( loser!konig coded, once he finally gets his rough hands on you, it's hard letting a beauty like you go ruined ur cute little panties smh, greedy big boy mean colonel punishing his secret fuck buddy after he found out you've started talking to another person💢 bonus!!: surprise ;)

@xtrrdnrypotato @livingdead-g1rl

[humanjarvis]

the world when you're with me

synopsis: you seek out sylus for comfort after realizing you were wrong about him.

tags: comfort, fluff, implied avoidant!reader learns to trust sylus, implied avoidant!reader clings to sylus, sylus takes care of reader from afar, sylus has mephisto and the twins follow reader but wbk pairing: sylus x reader, reader is mostly mc word count: 802

a/n: is this the peak of literature? no. did i need to write it after the day i had? yes. did i need to post it today? no, because i’m trying to stagger my posts more, but here we are. anyway 4k caleb pwp coming tomorrow 

For the first few weeks after you’d infiltrated the N109 Zone, you’d avoided Sylus Qin like the plague. 

After being scared out of your wits by the first version of him you'd met—the cold, unavailable criminal mastermind who’d forced you to shoot him within 5 minutes of knowing one other—you were unashamedly wary of working with him again. 

But Sylus’s intel was unrivaled. More and more often, you found yourself visiting the N109 Zone to meet with him, eventually not even bothering to book a place to stay. There was always a guest room at the Onychinus base prepped for your arrival.

As you spent more time with Sylus, he’d noticeably changed his approach to interacting with you. Rather than forcing you to resonate with him, he’d explained to you how his Evol worked, letting you aim his hands at some training dummies to test it out yourself. Instead of unceremoniously shutting you out when he was tired, he’d drag his robe-and-slippers-clad self to sit beside you on the sofa, answering your cautious questions by practically giving away all his secrets. 

His shift in attitude hadn't stopped there. Sylus had clearly been using that endearingly incorrigible crow to keep tabs on you, but for the strangest reasons. 

Whenever you had a bad day at work, some building-wide maintenance emergency would magically appear, forcing your team to cease operations for the rest of the day. He’d text you a couple hours after your early dismissal, saying he was in the city and inviting you on an evening joyride to clear your head.  

The day after you’d lugged a case of water up the stairs to your apartment, having to pause a couple times to catch your breath, you came home to see your fridge mysteriously stocked with groceries. The only traces left behind were the masked twin figures you spotted scurrying away from your window. 

When a new phone showed up at your doorstep one day—you never even told him you’d shattered your screen, you thought—you’d decided that Sylus wasn’t as bad as you’d once assumed. Not anywhere near as bad, in fact. He was thoughtful, generous, and helped you without taking credit or forcing you to ask for it. You’d never had that before.

Which is why, somehow, you find yourself standing in the doorway of his armory, studying him silently as he polishes an antique-looking gun.

When he notices you, Sylus looks up, raising a delicately arched eyebrow. “Something wrong, kitten?” he drawls, subtly checking your body for injuries. 

Mind numb from your absolutely dreadful day, you stay silent while Sylus looks at you expectantly, his hands forgetting their earlier task. 

But for the next minute, you remain hovering in the doorway. You expect him to get annoyed—you almost want him to, so you have an excuse to go back to relying only on yourself—but all you see on Sylus’s face is patience.

When you start shuffling toward him, that patience mixes with a glimmer of anticipation that he visibly tries to suppress. You need him to be calm right now—an anchor, he thinks. If he loses his composure, if he startles you with his excitement at your approach, you might bolt at any moment. 

Sometime during his inner struggle, you reach him. Meekly, you stand before his chair, briefly opening your mouth before closing it. 

“What is it, sweetie?” he asks softly. “Tell me, and we can figure it out together. I’ll personally track down whoever seems to have stolen your words from you.”

At his offer, you break, collapsing into his lap. His large, warm hands immediately encircle your waist, and you bury your face into his neck, inhaling his leather and spice cologne. 

“Aw,” he coos in his baritone voice, rocking you slowly in his embrace. When he lifts your head an inch, you resist, letting out a soft whine. Gently, he guides your head back to his chest, his quickening heartbeat thumping in your ears and grounding you in the the moment. 

After several moments of silence, your deep, shuddering breaths the only interruptions, Sylus murmurs into your ear. “When I noticed you never ask for help, I was worried the world may not be treating as well as it should. You must be very tired, hmm?” he asks, rubbing his chin against your hair. 

Tightening your arms around him, you sit there for a while, his steady breaths seeming to mend a decades-long rift in your heart.

The next time Sylus tries to lift your head, you let him. He pulls your face from his neck so he can look into your eyes, hoping his gaze conveys his sincerity, before pressing a tender kiss to your forehead. 

“You don’t need the world when you’re with me,” he promises. “I’ll treat you better than it ever could.”

[dawn-moths]

not autocorrect thinking i mean "dubai" whenever i type "dabi" -_-