#start something in motion

[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. 

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

None of our hands are clean

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[somegrumpynerd]

Assorted Horror and Killer doodles since there aren't enough of them c:

Killer by Rahafwabas Horror by Sour-apple-studios

[cemeterygrace]

LADS IM PISSING MYSELF THERES RUMORS THAT WARPED IS COMING BACK NEXT YEAR FOR THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY

[captainjimothy]

spirk fucked on the shakedown cruise btw. IF you even care.............

[macchiavato]

Mairon/Adar animation I need to finish one day. (They're gonna kiss!)

Inspired by the little chain on Mairon's corset. What else could it be for but to be pulled at?! ╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

[spittinwatches]

This is so messy but tmh silhouette exploration

[evelili]

As an immigrant child, your new fic had resonated with me. It made me tear up eating dinner with my family.

When Saffron said, “This selfish desperation to know that I haven’t lost my connection to my home." It instantly took me back to being constantly teased by my friends for not being 'in tuned' with my culture like how they were, or how I desperately tried speaking in my native tongue with my parents, despite having a very clear american accent and them constantly assuring me that speaking in english is fine. My grandmother had passed earlier this year, she was the grandparent that I knew the least. I started asking about her from her sisters as my mother isn't in the state to answer anything, I've tried so hard to pick up the pieces of what her sisters have told me to construct an image of her personality. She used to constantly ask me to call her so when I read about Saffron talking about how video calls have were never the same and never enough, it hit me like a load of bricks.

Your fanfiction is so tremendously beautiful in describing the feelings I have felt all my life. How I know that where I am right now isnt home, but my actual home has been so unfamiliar after my grandmothers passing. I have constantly felt like I have disappointed her, so when Sunset confessed to the same thing, I couldn't hold my emotions in anymore. The ending with Saffron talking about how she would be waiting for Sunset to come home if she was her mother made hope that was true with me and my grandmother, if I were to ever reunite with her again when I pass away myself.

Thank you so much for writing this story. It was the most comfortable yet intense stories I have ever had the blessing to read. I am sorry for rambling and I hope this entire message makes some sort of sense? I hope whatever you're dealing with gets solved to the way you have hoped it would.

You have also made me see dal in a new light, it was never a food that I used to like, but I am willing to give it another shot lol

i looked at this ask earlier and had to take some time to process how to respond to this. i think tho i still dont really know how to, so i hope thats ok!

first of all, thank you so much for being comfortable enough to tell me ur story. it really means a lot that you would open up to me, a stranger, and the fact that you did so bc something i made had an impact on u quite actually moved me to tears. im a bit of a soggy mess rn lol. thank you again, truly.

second, i want to express my empathy for you and your situation with your grandmother. my grandad passed away before i could graduate, and it was during the height of lockdowns, so i hadnt seen him in a while. i didnt go to visit him in the hospital, so theres always this feeling of "what if i had called more? what if i had tried harder to visit? what if i spent more time with him?" that doesnt really go away. and, as a kid of 2 immigrant families, i can also really empathize with feeling a disconnect from your culture--when ur not surrounded by ur parents culture but u also visibly dont look like ur "from" the one u were raised in, it can feel really alienating, even though you havent done anything except just. exist in this sort of inbetween?

all of this i guess is to say that, i put a lot of my own experiences into this fic. and it's almost relieving in a way to know that u saw what i put there, and that this experience is something that other people have felt as well. thank you so very much again for reading ;v;

[sundrykitsch]

writhing on the floor because i thought about art for a second too long

[smile-files]

HELP???

[dailybugsnax]

day 1 - spuddy

(except i don't know how to draw foil and couldn't figure it out... so sticker version)

[passionfruitmango]

When you feel so many "bad" emotions that your system goes cold and you full disassociate.

[syn4k]

yo so since pix had that whole "beating minecraft dungeons without using any weapons" series, i like to think that in series like the survival guide cubitoriffs has hand wraps and stuff like that, especially during the early game. or like fingerless gloves or something like i've seen people draw for his esmp s2 design. in conclusion: give this man some cool ass gloves or glove adjacent things!!! he uses his hands a lot!

[chrlotpony]

anyone else or at least any other artist thinks about the smallest of things and specifically who or how they made them when watching something that required animation? like the new squid games intro for season 2, I was thinking it was animated by a small team everytime I saw it in the beginning of an episode, and then I just found out it was made by Avalynn Kim who is a motion graphic designer

[moe-broey]

When it comes to horny art esp in FEH like. I'm always split between "I don't wanna be sex negative and prudish that's stupid" and "Okay but there IS a misogyny problem (specifically about how female characters are portrayed/treated)" and "I'm Sorry Women (I do like huge titties and stupid slutty outfits)" and "I'm a huge anatomy nerd and what's pissing me off the most are the shit proportions here actually"

^ This user is on the asexuality spectrum.

[bell-swamp-fitzjames]

I am going to approach my playlist creator commentary like a documentary of sorts bc i do this it's worth noting how really fucking cool the davechella event is. like regardless of whatever freak behavior i am personally exhibiting, and i know i'm not the first to say this nor is it the first time ive said this either, but it's just so cool to see the things the terror fandom gets up to. like okay yinz are all onto something i suppose. even creators and others involved in this show from 2018 are still giving the fans little treats. it's very special and cool.