#trans smolverine

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I'm in love with your tags about Logan and Trans!Laura, just,,,, so you know I appreciate your tag stories!!!!!

anonymous said:

I would absolutely love it if you wrote some trans Laura content tbh. Even just your tag essay made me feel some kind of emotions

The original tag essay is here, and I’m operating in a functional AU of this thing I wrote one time, but that doesn’t matter unless you want the deleted scene of Laura trying to take Logan’s head off.

X-23 is one of thirteen…brothers, for lack of a better word.  The lab staff call them brothers, a little tongue-in-cheek, and X-23 learns to hate the word, learns the taste of being called brother like the taste of blood, learns it as thing and copy and weapon.  All of them do, but X-23 hates it the most.  

X-23′s brothers die one at a time–some of natural causes.  There were ten of them who never made it out of the ex vitro tanks, and X-14 dies at a year, X-11 at nineteen months, X-19 at three years, X-17 at five.  X-13 falls during training and the three broken ribs ‘heal’ straight into lung tissue, and the doctors usher the rest of them away.  X-13 never comes back from the medical bay, and neither do X-15, X-12, or X-22–broken leg, crushed hand, and cracked skull, in order.  Healed to death.

When X-23 comes looking for X-22, there’s a doctor sitting alone in an office with her hands clutched so tight the knuckles are bleached.  X-23 has always been a wanderer, more than the other brothers, and given to getting into trouble, often punished and all the more furious for it.

The doctor looks up when the door opens and scrubs the back of one hand over her face.

“Where’s X-22,” X-23 says flatly, and the doctor comes over to crouch down, on eye level.  X-23 is short.  They’re all short.

“I’m really sorry,” the doctor says, and she sounds sincere, her eyes red and her scent washed with something X-23 doesn’t recognize.  “He–he died, Veintitres.  We did everything we could to save him.”

If it was any other doctor, X-23 would snarl and storm off, retreat to the others.  They’re never reprimanded for their tempers, only for disobedience.

This doctor, though.  This is the nicest doctor.  She never wears anything that makes them sneeze, and she brings chocolates when they have to get blood drawn, and she never told a soul when X-23 carefully removed one of her earrings, a plain silver hoop on X-23′s palm.  X-23 gave it back, but–

��Pretty,” X-23 says dully, reaching out to touch one of the hoops.  “He liked them too.”

The doctor’s eyes spill over and that smell pours off her skin as she carefully–very carefully, there are limits even for the nicest doctor–wraps one arm around X-23.

“Come on.  Let’s take you back to your brothers.”

There are five of them who make it to ten years old–X-16, X-18, X-20, X-21, and X-23.

There is one of them who makes it to ten years and one day.

X-23 doesn’t have any brothers anymore, just heavy bones and anger.  The word brother is less dirty now that they’re all gone.

“What do we do with him?” X-23 hears a lab tech ask nervously as the newly silvered claws rip through another bed frame.  X-23 has destroyed two so far.  They’re an effort–metal frames intended to survive their rough treatment–but the claws are stronger.

X-23 hears him and thinks hate and decides then and there that she will be something else.

She destroys the fifth bed frame–she’ll sleep on the ground before she takes one of her brothers’ beds, and they never kept track of whose was whose, same scents, same bodies, same everything–and she stands there and looks at her new claws.  They’re brighter silver than the nicest doctor’s earrings, but bloody.

The nicest doctor disappeared last year, after X-22 died.

She sheathes her claws and storms out of the room and past the lab tech without a word.  She is a thing and a weapon and the last X clone and she will keep the secret that she is not him until they kill her, too.

X-23 is fourteen and terrifying when she hears that they’re thinking about doing a new set of clones.

She burns down the lab three days later and leaves with nothing but her tactical uniform.  She steals a hat when she realizes that her buzzed hair is drawing attention, and breaks into a library to google Wolverine based on a slip from a doctor, and starts walking north east.  

Her hair grows fast.  It reaches chin length and keeps going, scruffy and wild, and she takes off her hat one day and shakes it out in a house she broke into, and her face starts to ache.  X-23 puts both hands up to her cheeks and tracks out the smile in surprise, and gives her head another shake, and her hair, freshly cleaned with someone else’s drug store shampoo, tickles her shoulders and her cheeks like the glint of light on silver earrings.

She stops wearing the hat the first day someone sees her hair and calls her miss with the kind of bow you sweep to little kids.  She forgets to snarl at them.

X-23 is halfway through walking from Mexico to New York when she gets asked what her name is, where her parents are.

“I don’t have any parents,” she tells the man in the uniform, squinting suspiciously at him.  He’s crouched down, well outside arm’s length, but she’s thinking about whether she can put a claw through his hand before he can grab her anyway.

“Okay,” he says calmly.  “What’s your name, honey?”

Weapons don’t have names.

She runs before he can stop her.

When she reaches New York, and Westchester, she has a good old try at taking Weapon X’s head off.

It doesn’t work.

So when she’s done screaming wordless rage into his chest, and Weapon X is done deducing how she got there, they sit side-by-side on the ground and X-23 tries to imitate the way he clasps his arms loosely around his knees.  It feels natural, supports the weight of the adamantium in her arms without effort, and she scowls at him when he notices.

“So, kid,” he says after a few minutes.  “You said there were twenty-three of you, right?”

She nods stiffly.  “All the rest of them are dead.  They were going to make more brothers, but I stopped them.”

“Good,” Weapon X says grimly.  “If I’d known, kid, I’d have done something for you and your brothers.  You did good.”

“Do you have brothers, Weapon X?”

“No idea,” he says with a shrug.  “Don’t remember much before the experiments.  You call me Weapon X again,” he goes on in the same equal tone, “I’m gonna leave you out here.  My name’s Logan, kid.  You got a name yet, or haven’t you got that far?”

“They didn’t give us names.”

“Weapons don’t get names,” Weapon X choruses with her, and he sighs.  “Well, you gotta have a name, I’m not callin’ you Twenty-three.”

“Sometimes they called me Veintitres.”

“That’s just ‘twenty-three’ in Spanish, kid, nice try.  Uh.”  He scrubs both hands back through his hair and laces them behind his neck.  “I’m shit at this.  Stole my name off a movie poster.  You seen any you liked?”

X-23 thinks about it.  She’s seen movie posters.  Most of the names are either desperately boring, like Tom, or unfamiliar and unpronounceable, like Charlize, and she doesn’t really know what she’s supposed to look for.

She remembers a poster of a woman with earrings, and the old black and white ink didn’t make them glitter any less.  She didn’t see the woman’s name, but she remembers the title.

“Laura,” she says.

Weapon X blinks at her for a moment.  “Nice name,” he says at last.  “Don’t think I asked, kid. You a boy or a girl?”

“I’m a clone.”

He actually grins at that.  “Yeah, I got that.  But, uh, you like he or she?”

X-23 stares at him and thinks.  She’s kept this secret, this sole scrap of a person under all the metal, for four years, give or take a few months.  But Weapon X gave up his name to her without even hesitating, didn’t lay a hand on her except for a few bruises that are already healing, isn’t even fidgeting while she studies him, just letting her look her fill.

“She,” X-23 says firmly.  

“Okay,” Weapon X says, and unfolds himself with a sigh.  He’s short, she notices.  He offers her a hand and catches her wrist and pulls her to her feet, then drops a hand firmly on her shoulder and steers her out of the woods.  “Let’s go get some lunch, Laura.”

[iconiczuko]

[smallblueandloud]

some x-men fic recs

the weekly surge of fandom-related hyperactivity hit a few days late, but i’ve been reading a LOT of fic today and i actually found some xmen authors on ao3! in the wild! with really good takes! i’m so excited about it and i’m gonna post about it even though i’m not sure any of y’all care about xmen because i don’t want to lose them lmao.

GrayJay - really good scott summers takes. excellent scott summers takes. like, oh my god. also some AWESOME rachel summers fics (and scott & rachel fics and rachel/kitty fics). some notables:

SPECTACULAR masterpiece of an epistolary work set between scott finding alex and alex manifesting (scott&alex, scott/jean, charles&scott, i want to write a fic based on this where alex finds out about the xmen by seeing scott in action but that’s a Whole Other Story)

scott and alex and illyana open a pizza parlor (scott&alex, scott&illyana, VERY cool take on illyana as well as the brothers, of course)

rachel and scott-who-isn’t-her-father spend christmas together (scott&rachel, scott/jean, i LOVE this summers family content and i’m obsessed with thinking about the traditions scott and rachel build)

some books in rachel’s library (scott&rachel, rachel/kitty, absolutely fucking obsessed with the fact that rachel inherits scott’s found family)

scott is trans and not much changes (scott/jean, moira&scott, hank&scott, everyone&scott, i am so here for trans scott and i’m so glad it seems to be a popular trope because i’m OBSESSED with it, it’s so good, for a guy obsessed with control and image and-- i’m rambling)

scott and matt murdock have a tradition of pool (scott&matt, scott&logan, besides being a really good take on scott and matt as people it is also possibly the BEST scott and logan dynamic i have EVER SEEN and i’m still reeling from it)

scott and madelyne, in the beginning (scott/madelyne, scott/jean, A GOOD MADELYNE TAKE?? IN MY AO3 HISTORY??? IT’S MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK!)

scott and kitty at the very beginning of whedon’s astonishing (scott&kitty, scott/jean, scott/emma, kitty/piotr, kitty&emma [more or less], i’m a fan of everything but most notably the focus on the fact that scott knows how to deal with telepaths and the acknowledgement that kitty and scott don’t actually? know each other that well?? i love it. a good take. an excellent take.)

emma reads scott’s mind (scott/emma, scott/jean, IMAGINE HAVING SUCH A GOOD TAKE ON TELEPATHY. I’M OBSESSED WITH IT. I’M OBSESSED WITH THIS TAKE ON S/E, IMAGINE HAVING A GOOD DYNAMIC FOR THEM?? STILL SHOOK)

(i don’t know if they’re on tumblr but if they are can someone point me in their direction? i want to follow someone who has such excellent ideas and characterizations)

Dain (tumblr at @ndscottsummers) - MADELYNE PRYOR RIGHTS?? GAY RIGHTS?? AUTISTIC SCOTT RIGHTS?? IT’S ALL HERE, FOLKS! some notables:

jean comes back in x-factor #1 and nathaniel essex happens (scott&jean, scott&madelyne, the idea that jean masks her autism by using telepathy lives RENT FREE in my head. this is also the ideal scott-doesn’t-trust-it’s-jean situation right here and i am LOVING IT)

scott comes back to life in house of x #5 (scott/ororo, THIS SHIP is godtier and i don’t know why there isn’t more content for it. only reason i can think of is that this fic can’t be topped. just like... “She asks him how she knows who he is and he answers with the first truth he thinks of: that she is one of the forces that has shaped him, that he may be reborn but the marks she has left on him will never fade.” ARGH)

kitty thinking about how rachel knew her in the future (pre relationship rachel/kitty and i’m OBSESSED with it folks, imagine having SUCH a good grasp of this ship and their complicated time schenanigans)

scott is trans and his team supports him (everyone&scott, i am IN LOVE with everyone accompanying him to the store, do you hear me? in LOVE!!! it’s so good!! it’s such a good fic!! those original five being kiddos and taking care of each other and refusing to leave anyone behind!!!!!)

they also have some AMAZING star wars fics, including two twin fics (luke braids leia’s hair, luke and leia take a break from hanleia’s wedding) that are literally everything i have ever wanted. like if you’ve been around here for more than ten minutes you know that is not an exaggeration. also!! aro luke rights!! my FAVORITE headcanon about luke’s identity and these fics are so GOOD!!!

Duck_Life - i have never felt more vindicated in being extremely multifandom. i’m still working my way through their VAST archive but like. oh my god. i’m in love. some notables:

series of xmen ficlets (this is cheating, especially since i’m gonna bring some of these up later, but READ THIS. these fics are all fantastic and once you get to, like, part 26? or so? you’re following along with the dawn of x relaunch, which is EVERYTHING i have EVER WANTED, y’all have no idea how much i’ve craved fic about the newest comics. amazing stuff. the best new mutants content ever.)

trans smolverine bonding with kitty and rachel (laura&kitty, laura&rachel, i am obsessed with the idea of trans smolverine - thanks star - and i’m EXTRA OBSESSED with kitty and rachel trying to bond with her and make friends with her and teach her how to be a human being. it’s really good)

jean and scott and logan, without doors between their bedrooms (jean/scott/logan, LOOK. okay. i was gonna go in order, i was gonna do these fics in the order they were written, but i literally sent this fic to everyone that knew what xmen was because i’m SO EXCITED about it. the scott characterization!! the fact of them getting together!! the ideal dynamics!! THE FUCKING SCOTT CHARACTERIZATION!! this fic broke me i am ruined and i regret nothing. thank you op for my life)

i was gonna rec more fics from them but it’s getting late and i should probably finish working my way through the rest of their fic before i rec more but! go read it!! (they also have some EXCELLENT star trek fic. i got sidetracked. this is why i’m not done with the xmen stuff lmao.) i’ll get back to this, hopefully, although knowing me i probably won’t. anyway, go forth and enjoy!

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hey I used to be eggosandxmen and uh!! Your fic STILL means more to me than anything, I’ve had a Rough trans week and I’m rereading all of it and !! I love you man

NICE NEW URL MY DUDE, I LOVE IT

And I’m so glad that my Feelings about trans Laura are helpful to you, I still love that concept so much and I just want other people to agree with me that stories about self-determination are the perfect medium for trans characters thanks.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Headcanon meme: Logan? (Or Laura, your choice.)

Some of both, I think, because I love them both so much.  Speaking of which, I’m rereading the X-Men comics I own starting with the very first issue in the 60′s, with the overdramatic dialogue and the ridiculous costumes, and...I love them...so much.  For this headcanon meme!

HeadcanonLaura! Is! Trans!  Good talk!

For Logan, I still really truly believe that he and Steve Rogers ran in similar circles for a minute or twenty in WWII, because quite frankly if one super soldier is good, one super soldier and one dude with an upsetting talent for taking a bullet and walking it off is better.  Steve remembers Logan much better than Logan remembers Steve, because Logan’s working with a fair amount of memory loss just purely because, yeah, he can take a bullet to the brain and get back up, but memory storage is a delicate business and repairing the neural paths doesn’t necessarily repair the memories.  The two of them get drinks sometimes regardless.

HeartcanonLaura and Logan are both Highly Paranoid (with good reasons) and therefore people tend to expect them to radiate enough unease to make animals nervous.  They are Deeply Wrong.  Laura, at first, tends to be more afraid of animals than they are of her, relic of a long history of any and all new creatures being basically a gladiatorial fight to the death, but she comes around pretty quickly when Logan shows her how to entice a stray cat toward her.  As soon as Laura calms down the pair of them are always the most popular kids at the dance when it comes to domestic animals (with the exception of horses, which are anxious enough to need some soothing first) and one time Laura wandered out of the woods behind the manor with a real-ass fox in her arms.  

“You’re a Disney princess,” Kitty gasps, thrilled.

“I am not,” Laura snaps, blushing, and puts the fox down.  It does not leave.  As far as it’s concerned it’s found the universe’s friendliest apex predator and it’s pretty sure that following her around is going to get it enough food to turn it into a fox-colored sphere.

Gutcanon...the HYDRA cell that cloned Laura included a neurobiologist who used to work for the Red Room, and as such Laura has command coding modeled off the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow program deeply laced into her brain.  They learn this in the worst possible way (of course) and the ensuing fight to keep her contained nearly kills even Logan.  When she comes back to herself, she’s covered in his blood and Logan is still standing between her and the rest of the X-Men, because he knows from bitter experience that coming out of a haze and finding you’ve killed someone you love is the worst experience in the world.

See, the Weapon X program, when it experimented on Logan, was well equipped mechanically but underprepared for the delicate process of brainwashing.  Their first attempt crossed wires badly with Logan’s mutation, and accidental (or intentional) activation of the programming would send him into berserker rages, and...yeah.  He’s not letting that happen to Laura.  A lot of bad shit’s happened to her because of him, including this, but he’s pretty sure she’ll come out of it before she actually kills him for good, so he takes the punishment and does.  Not.  Move.

JunkcanonHey listen, I know Kitty/Illyana is, like, The Thing, but: Illyana/Laura?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Just me?  They would be a narratively perfect match, and also I would LOVE the parallel of Sweet Smiling Sunshine Illyana Who Is Also Belasco’s Heir and Grumpy Scowly Swear-y Laura Who Is Lowkey On A Righteous Crusade.  Tall Illyana in her high femme armor with a bigass sword and short Laura with her hair up in a ponytail and the blood of her enemies on her highly practical uniform.  Laura’s mutation and training mean she’s strong enough to carry her girlfriend bridal style even though Illyana is extremely Colossus’ sister and like a good solid seven inches taller than Laura’s 5′4″.  Illyana is enthralled with this fact.  One time Laura saw Illyana throw her sword like a javelin in a training session and instantly got clobbered by a mock Sentinel while she was staring.  It was totally worth it because Illyana spent the next hour fretting over Laura, healing factor notwithstanding.

Illyana had more of a childhood than Laura did (although not THAT much more) and teaches her dumb stuff like clapping games and jumprope, and one of the languages Laura learned in the lab was Russian and she falls in love with the language like she’s never done before when she hears Illyana telling bad jokes in it.

It takes Illyana a little while to get over her hopeless crush on Kitty, and it takes Laura even longer to figure out what the fuck pining even is, let alone that she’s been doing it, and then they’re sweet and clumsy and earnest together while Logan and Colossus kind of eye each other dubiously over their heads.

Come the fuck on, guys, this is a great concept.  This is, like, the Sweetest Ship.

God, catch me getting feelings about an AU where Laura is an angel and Illyana is a demon even though I’ve never read a single Magyk comic.

SpleencanonCanon can frankly suck an entire dick, especially on the subject of their perennial Death Of Wolverine nonsense.  Like, listen up?  Bitch?  You can have an immortal character.  It’s okay.  You can do that.  I understand that you feel like you need to keep doing the death thing because it’s “emotionally poignant” or whatever, but fucking COUNTER-PROPOSAL: you have a bunch of potentially immortal characters, which, understandably, you milk for a lot of angst.  That’s okay, I like mortals-and-immortals angst, but you need to stop fucking killing Wolverine because it’s nonsensical and annoying and never sticks, so what you’re going to do instead is have Wolverine start a whole fucking daisy-chain of immortal found family narratives.  Just have Logan adopt all of them.  Literally every single immortal character who isn’t actively out to do a genocide is Logan’s child now.  

Laura?  Yep.  

Illyana?  That’s his baby girl.  

Thor?  Thor needs a strong father figure in his life and Odin ain’t always top notch.  

Silver Surfer?  Norrin is a sad and shiny boy who could probably stand to have a parent around so he stops making so many bad fucking decisions.  

Elixir?  You KNOW Logan’s already on his game there.  

Steve Rogers?  Depending on your canon homeboy could live a long fucking time with that serum, and as we’ve discussed Logan was already Full Dad Mode in WWII, it’s just the status quo.

And like, Logan doesn’t need to keep all his new kids at home with him, most of them are grown folk, they’re adults, they can take care of themselves, but what I’m going to need is an ever-growing network of semi-to-fully-immortal characters who know that they can call up Wolverine when their girlfriend or their children or whoever lives out a long mortal life and dies of old age.  

You think I’m kidding but I’m EXTREMELY serious.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

can you write “something before canon” for Laura Kinney or for anyone you like if you’re not feelin it! Your writing is Peak!!!

HECK that’s a HEADCANONS MEME well okay can you write just. Whatever prompt you feel for the character I mentioned earlier? Sorry!

For the Thousand Meme!  Also, my relevant X-23 AU of Evolution!

1. Something before canon

Subject X-23 was not...the apple of the lab’s eye, so to speak.  X-23 was a gifted fighter in a way that the other subjects weren’t--not because she was better or faster or stronger, but because she was angrier.  The berserker rage was part of their genetic code, true, a direct inheritance from Weapon X, part of their mutation that couldn’t be stripped away, but X-23 was wrathful in a way that the others, by and large, were not.  When they were younger it meant X-23 lost fights when she lost her temper.  By the time they were taken for the adamantium procedure, X-23 had managed to marry precision training to blind rage and come out with something as fatally dangerous as her creators could have hoped.

The issue, of course, lay in the fact that X-23 could not be trusted to point that lethal combination in the right direction.  Or, more often, in any direction at all.    X-23 never quite transgressed to the point where they would have been justified in putting her down, but--only barely.

The discovery that X-23 was the only survivor of the adamantium procedure was...not a welcome one.

The technicians who spent the last decade and change trying to stay out of X-23′s crossfire are not, shall we say, surprised when she wrecks the lab and leaves it burning in her wake.

8. Something domestic

“I don’t understand why this is necessary.”  Laura doesn’t really mean to complain, but she was also supposed to be training today.  Looking forward to training is...strange.  But training with the X-Men is a wildly different experience from her training in the lab.  Less precise and efficient.  Scott ended a training match once, because Laura had a broken piece of shrapnel lodged in her ribs, even though he knows she heals.  She had demanded, angry, why he had stopped the hologram, and Scott had looked her square in the eye and said flatly, “We don’t expect you to fight while you’re bleeding into a lung.  I don’t care how fast you heal.”

She’d gone to Logan, afterward, because she always goes to Logan these days, and he’d shrugged and said, “They’re your team.  They’re teaching you to have their backs, and how to let them have yours.  You’ll adjust.”

So she’s adjusting.

Except not today, apparently, because today she’s standing with her arms clasped around her chest while Ororo puts a pan on the stove.

“It’s necessary that you be able to feed yourself,” Ororo says sternly, arching a white eyebrow at Laura.  

“I can feed myself,” Laura says.

“I refuse to allow Bobby Drake and Jubilee to be your sole concept of edible food,” Ororo continues as if Laura didn’t say anything.  “Hot Pockets are not--good, or cooking, and eating Poptarts for every meal will give you some kind of deficiency.  If you want to eat condiments with a spoon because you like the taste, that’s fine, but you’re learning to make real food if it kills us both.”  She gives Laura a look that says she knows why they run through mustard so fast.  

Laura scowls at the floor.  By and large, no one has really prevented her from bouncing around the food pyramid like a Super Ball--she has a high calorie demand under normal circumstances, higher when she’s healing herself, and she did see Jean stick a spoon full of marmalade in her mouth, so no one’s got that much of a moral high ground.  But clearly someone ratted her out for eating three boxes of cherry Poptarts and nothing else on Tuesday, and apparently even Ororo’s infinite patience has its limits.

“It sounds like a lot of work,” Laura says.

“We’ll learn things that are easy,” Ororo says, as inexorable as a storm front rolling over the horizon.  “If you decide you like it enough, someone here can teach you more complicated recipes.  Today we’re going to cook cheesy eggs with tomatoes.”

Laura glances up at that.  “Do I get to eat them, after?”

“Obviously.”

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Hi I just read your Trans Female X-23 fic and I'm 100% here for any and all X-Men content that's about Logan and his many children let my feral faves be happy thanks Marvel

This ask is some top-tier #Relatable Content.  If they put out an entire run of comics that was literally nothing but daily shenanigans at the Institute, featuring Logan the Accidental Dad being long-suffering in every single issue, I would break my habit of not spending 100% of my money on comics very quickly.  All I want is some fucking slice-of-life emotionally resonant shit.  I am not in this for the Big Fights.  I enjoy them!  I do!  But I am here for Feelings, let’s be perfectly clear.

And I’m so glad you enjoyed the fic!  I have a lot of feelings about trans Laura who doesn’t grasp gender well because she grew up in a lab.  Also, I have a lot to say about self-determination and clones being different from their originals and that kind of sci-fi shit, and honestly that narrative is so viscerally satisfying if Laura realizes she’s trans as a part of her individuation process, goddamn, why aren’t more people on this concept.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Sweet okay so I've got the trans!Laura podfic done and would def appreciate you popping it on ao3. Mostly because your titles are waaay better then mine haha. Thanks for being fab! *fingerguns*

YOU’RE SO AMAZING

HERE IT IS

[words-writ-in-starlight]

your trans Laura Kinney fanfiction made me cry, I was having a horrible dysphoria day and your fic made it better than you - a trans boy whose been Hyperfixtating on Laura since forever

Hey so uh

This is probably one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten

Thank you

(the thing in question)