#super weird it really killed my mood I very much regret not following the fandom here on tumblr at the time ç__ç

[bluehairperson]

don't you just love joining a fandom too late :').

Yeah :')

Sometimes I get kinda sad thinking about all the inside jokes, fanarts and fandom excitement I must have missed by arriving late.

I remember discovering the game like... almost ten years ago, I think? But my phone was too old to run the app and it kept crashing every couple of dialogues, so I had to disinstall it while all my friends were playing through it just fine. I was only able to get into it a couple of years ago when I managed to buy a more recent device, but by that time all my friends had already moved on and were no longer much interested in it. 😭

It sucks, but this can't stop me or you to enjoy all the content that's already here and to create something new by our own! I get that once a series stops being updated (or not if we consider the Dorian situation) the fan excitement kinda dies, but personally my hype has always been more dependant from fans' creations rather than canon material.

Since I've started posting, all my friends who were into the game years ago decided to re download the app just because of how annoying enthusiastic I am about it. I also convinced at least a couple of people who had never heard of it before!

Moral of the story is: as long as someone is willing to be annoying about a series you can keep the fandom alive and drag other people into it.

[dontcallmecarrie]

By Myself But Not Alone

Another day, another test, another fic-idea-that-won’t-leave-me-alone. Specifically: time-travel fixits are really fun to see, but there’s a few takes on it that’ve stuck with me throughout the years, across fandoms. Even more specifically: ones where it’s not just one person waking up in the past, but several, and not always in the same place. Add in my weird mood where anything I touch turns to not-crack, plus glimpsing some Infinity Wars spoilers despite not being caught up, and ta-da! [Aka oops, I did it again.]

Heads up for quite a bit of angst, possible shippiness [depends on the version], and unapologetic canon-dropped-the-ball-on-Tony stance.  Title from Metallica’s ‘Wherever I May Roam’.

So, AU where, for whatever reason, people in the MCU after a certain point wake up in the past. 

Kicker being, it’s pretty damn scattershot from there; Steve’s memories kick in when he first sees Times Square after waking up from the ice, Natasha’s mid-mission somewhere in Bangladesh when she realizes some of her fellow operatives are probably. HYDRA and she can’t do a thing about it, Thor’s just seen his brother fall from the Bifrost and he’s alarming his parents because he’s acting even stranger than usual in his grief. Bucky wakes up after falling from the train, sees where he is, and goes “oh hells no” and promptly fucking off to Wakanda because even if they’re mistrustful of outsiders and will be for decades, between what he’s managed to pick up on the language, and his skills, there’s probably something he can do to help out, right? [Between long naps, anyway...or maybe he just goes full-on ninja instead, idk] Fury’s mid-conversation with Maria Hill in HQ when they both go “oh fuck what year is it” and the list just goes on. 

At first, everyone’s assuming they’re the only ones who traveled back, and they set out to fix things even as they’re reeling because hello, old friend who I haven’t seen in years since your painful death, how are you?

The more time goes on, though, the more everyone realizes they’re not the only ones running around, and the fact that people’re arriving at different points in time means it is a headache. Was AIM running around this early, last time? When the fuck was the Winter Soldier a mercenary and not the fist of HYDRA? What do you mean he’s infamous for his bodyguarding contracts and not assassinations?! Wait, you mean Howard Stark’s still alive?

On the plus side, after a while they realize the time travel thing’s not a one-off. The more time passes, the more people start to remember. [They’ve got a support group going by the time Steve remembers.]

Cue tearful reunions, feat. “oh god I didn’t think I was going to see you again” and “oh thank fuck I’m not the only one”. Everyone who remembers starts to put their heads together, sorting out their timeline to fix things without tripping over each other, to figure out what they can and can’t fix.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, though; Bucky punched Steve after the ‘yeah, I didn’t tell Tony about who actually killed his parents thing’ after it comes up, and he’s not the only one judging him hard afterwards and he resolves to fix it because he really is sorry. But hey, this is a whole new world, one where SHIELD never got corrupted, where the Winter Soldier is just a handle Bucky uses instead of decades’ worth of HYDRA conditioning. In many ways, it’s almost a vacation; seeing and reconnecting with loved ones, especially given the clusterfuck that happened in their original timeline.

...however. This is a whole new world, and that’s not necessarily always a good thing. Like, sure, there’s quite a few things that’re better here, but. 

Thanos is still coming, and due to the butterfly effect, there’s a whole slew of new guys that hadn’t come up in their timeline, like MODOK, like Crimson Widow, grad students they should keep an eye on because this Richards kid was going places and so was his friend, Victor von-something. Stark Industries is still selling weapons by the bucketload, since Howard Stark’s an unapologetic war hawk, has been since the Manhattan Project. But the biggest problem? 

It’s 2008, and Tony Stark has yet to make an appearance. Not in a way that matters, at least, to the people who remember him from another life.

———————

okay, from here I can see this going several ways:

[under the cut because this got long and RIP mobile users otherwise]

the super-angsty break-it-even-more version:

Warning: this one’s got suicidal thoughts leading to Major Character Death. Also, vaguely shippy, with possible Stephen/Tony.

Tony’s last coherent memories are of the bomb with his name on it, when it hits. Suddenly, it’s not just his past flashing before his eyes, but his future as well—years’ worth of memories, of trauma after trauma with next to no support whatsoever because the world did its best to break him—and...in that instant, he’s tired. 

He’s so, so tired, and he sees the road ahead and the idea of having to do that all over again is just. Too much. He knows the agony that follows, and knows that he was lucky to have survived a bomb to the chest last [this?] time, and...even if he’s terrified at the prospect of Thanos coming, he just. Can’t. 

He can’t, anymore, he’d barely managed to pull through last time, asking him to do it all over again was too much—and, seeing the bomb with his literal name on it, Tony sees an out. 

The world’s better off without him in it, anyway.

—

Everyone is shocked and dismayed, when the reports come in. Tony Stark never came back from Afghanistan, and there is a lot of grief to go around, in the time that follows. The world mourns a prodigy; the people that remember Iron Man, remember Tony, mourn a good man who they never really had the chance to meet. 

Fury in particular’s very, very quiet, after hearing the reports come in; he’s lost good people before, but...he’d seen Tony grow up, what with him being the kid of one of the founders of SHIELD and all. He’d seen the potential, seen it realized, seen just what kind of force for good he was—so when he hears the reports come in, he feels every single one of his years weigh down on him in a way they hadn’t before. It takes slightly longer than normal, pull himself together, to focus on how this latest development’d affect things now that they were minus a heavy hitter [in more ways than one].

Steve, meanwhile, is inconsolable. He’d had his regrets, had been working on fixing them, and one the biggest ones had been with Tony. He’d never had the chance to set the record straight, never had the chance to apologize—and now, he never will.  

Tony’s loss ia a huge blow, to those who remember Iron Man. 

Especially the more time goes on, and the impact of what could have done are felt: it’s in the scandal that erupts, when the VP of Stark Industries is caught double-dealing, it’s in the incredibly tense sociopolitical climate that follows because even if they’ve done their best to fix things, nobody’s around to privatize world peace. It’s in the recklessness the new Spider-Man’s actions, after Peter remembers—pushing himself so, so hard, trying to save everyone the same way his mentor once had him.

...it’s also in the questions everyone has, after Thanos rocks up and apart from the Avengers, there’s a goddamn robot army flying out to wage  war because apparently Tony’s AI were a bit more Skynet than anyone had expected. Or, actually, no—more sentient than expected, and wasn’t that a kick in pants, that JARVIS remembered not only his but Vision’s experiences as well, after hearing about Tony’s death?

wait, no. Too angsty, here, have a fixit.

Dr. Stephen Strange wakes up right after his first fight with the followers of Dormammu, and the Ancient One and Mordo are more than slightly worried when he looks like he’s about to cry when he sees them afterwards. Even more worried, once they check for magic, and the following conversation gives them all a migraine because they’re still not quite sure what sent him back in time, and that the Eye of Agamotto seems to have taken a liking to him only complicates things even further.

When he hears of Tony’s death, well...he doesn’t take it well. Specifically, after finding out he’s not the only one who remembers Tony from a different world, there’s a bit of yelling, and him storming out afterwards in grief.

To sum up: his emotional state after getting wind of it’s more volatile than anything else, which, as it turns out, makes for some interesting results when you’re the Time Stone’s favorite person. 

Specifically, Stephen opened a portal intending to go the Sanctum to mourn in privacy, how the fuck he ended up in the middle of a desert, he doesn’t know. How the fuck he ended up right by the same outcropping as Tony did the moment the bomb landed not ten feet from them, he doesn’t know but isn’t about to question. He just sees Tony’s face—fear shifting to shock shifting to remembering shifting to despair—realizes what’s about to happen, and grabs Tony as he immediately makes a portal back to the Sanctum. 

Cue even more headaches. The Ancient One, Mordo, and Wong are not amused by how fast and loose they’ve been messing with the timestream, and that the Eye is showing blatant favoritism doesn’t help. At all. 

On the plus side,  they’re also able to table that in favor of helping the shell-shocked guy who’s like a breeze from having a nervous breakdown. Cue therapy. Lots of therapy. Also, the ‘oops we accidentally faked your death’ reveal, what with the time travel thing, which then leads to some reunions because Tony could go a lifetime without seeing Steve again but he hasn’t heard JARVIS in years. 

...is this a shatterpoint of  a fic idea? Can’t tell anymore.

The more-bittersweet-than-anything-else version:

also slightly shippy, only it’s Steve/Tony here instead.

Everyone remembers. Everyone, but Tony.

They keep as close an eye on him as they can, given that JARVIS’ pretty paranoid about hacking and they’d have to go through Pepper to actually see. him. But they manage, even if it’s pretty tricky before Afghanistan.

Fury’s the  most straightforward; he’s shameless  about  using his connections to get an excuse to see how Tony’s doing, and Tony remembers seeing him around the mansion with Howard as a kid often enough to let it slide. [Especially  since SHIELD’s also buying quite a few guns for their personnel, there’s that, too.] 

After Afghanistan, the rest of them start to trickle in, similar to canon. 

Here, however, the dynamics are a lot kinder, a lot less terse. No thinly-veiled threats, no blackmail; when Tony returns after his ‘I Am Iron Man’ press conference, it’s because JARVIS remembers and Fury managed to convince him that he’s genuinely trying to do better this tine. Howard’s notes and old stuff get shipped over as soon as Phil Coulson can come with an excuse for it, because palladium poisoning is just...no. 

...you get the idea. Canon ensues, and Tony’s doing his thing, kicking ass, taking names, and trying to make the world a better place. Except here, everyone who remembers is seeing him in a way they hadn’t really, before, and treating him differently because of it. 

Tony picks up on it pretty fast—kinda hard not to, considering everything.  There’s an element of regret he sees some people, sometimes, but he doesn’t know why and it is baffling. Not only that, but...it’s almost like they know him? Almost like they can see pasts his masks? Weird.

Meanwhile everyone else’s low-key expecting Tony to remember any day no, but no dice. Kind of a bummer. Oh, sure, Pepper and Rhodey’ll give him all the hugs regardless, but still. Also, Steve wants to get some things off his. chest, and this Tony’s both so similar and so different to his, it’s almost painful.

Time goes on, canon ensues, only this time, a lot of missed opportunities are taken. 

Bruce sees the way Tony tentatively reaches out and listens, Steve calls him  when he gives him his number, Thor returns earlier, and the list just goes on. [...aka all the self-indulgence. All of it.] There’s a lot of impromptu hugs that Tony’s still very confused by, and strange looks, but...these people care, for some reason. It’s weird, but...he likes it. 

More and more people show up,  and it’s the same thing: he clicks with Strange almost as fast as he did with Bruce, although Peter’s hero-worship is still something that takes a while to get used to. 

Even if he sometimes feels like they’re seeing someone else when they look at him, but that can’t be right, can it? Well, fortunately that feeling goes away after a while, but still. It was weird while it lasted.

Tony doesn't remember because of Reasons. Maybe he repressed said memories because of the trauma, maybe that part of him was just too tired to make the trip, idk, you decide.