sometimes repeating the same information back in your face is funny

sometimes it also backfires :P (everything backfires when it comes to Deadpool, just give up Miguel, he is planning on 100% that sidequest)

Some thoughts about Miguel, the comics, and what it could mean for Beyond the Spiderverse

This post has spoilers in it! It also contains mentions of suicide. And it's also VERY long. Consider yourself warned.

Comic vs Movie Comparison

Going to be starting this off with comparing movie Miguel and comic Miguel. And to clarify before we get into it, I don’t think deviation from the comics is a bad thing, and I love both versions. Also worth mentioning that at the time of writing this I've only read the original series from 1992, Dark Genesis, and a couple of the temporal crossover stories (which I'm considering non-canon for the sake of this discussion). I might make another post like this once I've finished all of them.

Starting off with story deviation there's... not a lot for me to really say here, since we don’t know much about movie Miguel’s backstory aside from the part where he accidentally caused a universe to collapse, so there’s not a lot to point out in terms of story deviation yet. However his personality and behavior is a little bit different. He’s more serious in the movie. Now Miguel has always been more serious than most other versions of Spiderman, but in the comics he’s still humorous. His humor just tends to be more sarcastic and cynical (think a bit like Deadpool) rather than the quips and wisecracks you usually get with Spiderman. He’s pessimistic and actually pretty mean, especially when not in his Spiderman alter ego. I'll admit I do miss his sarcasm in retrospect, but at the same time it wouldn't really suit the role the movie has set him up to play. Plus his characterization in the movie is still super good, and I like it a lot.

Miguel in the comics does tend to be a lot less bouncy and acrobatic than most other spidermen, and that definitely shows in the movie too. But the movie did something I personally love, and pushed that aspect further, and made him almost animalistic rather than just a Spiderman that fights a bit more close quarters. He’s intimidating, he’s brutal, every move has weight and power that you can feel through the animation. They kept the inertia of his movements in mind, something they do for all of the characters but is especially noticeable and fun with characters like Miguel who have a lot of force behind their movements (This is also why I love how The Prowler is animated so much). One of my highest praises for these movies is that every character has their own unique style, and Miguel’s fits him very well and stays true to the comics.

And the last point I'm going to talk about before jumping in to speculation is the powers. There's not a lot for me to say here either in regards to comparison, since we've not really gotten a chance to see how movie Miguel's powers work, but I still do want to address it because if it's the same as in the comics, then he's actually pretty unique! Makes sense, considering he didn't get them from the standard radioactive spider-bite (more on that later). I am sorry to say but he is (probably) not a vampire (I say probably because it's entirely possible he is in the movie. But assuming it's the same as the comics, he isn't actually a vampire, just looks like one, since judging by the fact that Blade is... around... vampires are real in his world). Do keep drawing him as a vampire tho its hot.

Anyway. He does have those fangs in the comics! He also has venom! As in the paralytic toxin spiders use to catch prey, not the character. Another thing that sets him apart is that he... doesn't seem to have a spider-sense? At all? He has super enhanced normal senses, but not that sort of extra sense that pretty much every other spiderman seems to have. I don't know if this is true in the movie but it would be sort of neat. He also isn't sticky! Instead he has those talons to hook onto surfaces, those are a part of him, not the suit. Unless they changed it in the movie which is the one and only change i think would be super lame. But since they gave him the fangs I doubt it. There is one noteworthy difference between his powers in the comic and the movie, and it's that in the movie his webs seem to be technology based, maybe some form of energy or hard light technology, while in the comics he has spinnerets in his arms. It could also be a mix of both, or that could just be how his natural webs look. Either way I'm curious why that change was made, even if it was as simple as just to fit the futuristic aesthetic.

Miguel's Backstory

Onto the next section! I'm going to do my best to give a brief recap of Miguel's backstory, for anyone who doesn't know it. For the sake of simplicity I'm going to assume that his backstory in the movie is more or less the same as in the original comics, up to the part where he goes to another universe.

In the year 2099, most major cities are controlled by the interests of oppressive mega-corporations. Nueva York, controlled by Alchemax and their corporate police, is literally divided between the Uptown and the Downtown, the uptown being the shining, sparkling futuristic city where all of the rich and important people live, while the downtown is the crumbling remains of New York that have been built over, where all of those deemed worthless by Alchemax are confined to.

Miguel O'Hara is the head of the genetics project in Alchemax's R&D branch, leading their efforts regarding gene splicing and genetic manipulation. Miguel is a snarky, standoffish man, who’s just generally a jerk to pretty much everyone. He has a soft spot for Dana, his fiance, Lyla, his apartment's AI companion, and Gabriel, his younger brother, and... that's about it. Despite his rather high position in the company, Miguel has a strong distaste for Alchemax and its unethical scientific practices, and is determined to delay human genetics testing until he's sure it's 100% safe. After his reservations are ignored by the higher ups, and hasty human testing leads to the death of a man under Miguel's unwilling hand, he decides to quit working for the company. However, he's a valuable asset. Tyler Stone, the head of Alchemax, laces a drink for Miguel with Rapture, a hallucinogenic drug that alters genetic structure to cause almost guaranteed addiction and withdrawal so severe it can be deadly. Coincidentally, Rapture is only legally produced and distributed by Alchemax.

Rather than let himself be manipulated, Miguel decided to use his own genetic modification equipment to attempt to reverse the alterations made by Rapture. During the procedure, Miguel's supervisor, resentful of Miguel's fast rise through the ranks and his constant disrespect for his superiors, sabotaged the process in an attempt to kill him. Instead he ended up activating the gene splicing program, and spliced Miguel and a spider together. Why was a spider present at all, you may ask? The final result of this genetic manipulation project was super-soldiers, and Miguel had decided to take inspiration from a certain hero back in the Heroic Age. Spider based enhancements seemed to work pretty well back then, why not give it another go?

After emerging from the process very much not dead, but no longer human, Miguel has to navigate new powers, and the new dangers that come with the mantle he's accidentally taken. It's around this point when Miguel starts to have thoughts of taking his own life, and pretty consistently continues to throughout the story.

I'm not giving a full recap, this story is already long and I don't remember specifics for most things. Miguel faces a myriad of villains, future versions of classic spiderman villains and new foes as well. He also takes over Alchemax after usurping Tyler Stone, which I'll touch on again later. But throughout all of it a consistent theme for him is loss. Over the course of the original comics, he loses almost everyone he has any kind of connection with, in one way or another.

He has a falling out with his fiance, Dana, and before he can try to reconnect, she gets caught in the crossfire during a fight with Venom and dies in his arms. He finally starts to repair his broken relationship with his mother, only for her to be shot during a raid on Alchemax after she started working as a secretary. Gabriel eventually becomes so overcome with resentment for Miguel that he takes up the mantle of Green Goblin, and attempts to ruin his life and also kill him. Xina, an old flame he was rekindling his relationship with, left him again without so much as a goodbye. The only one he has left to turn to for any sort of familiarity or comfort is Lyla, and even she tried to kill him once. He cuts himself off from everyone who tries to make a connection with him again, because he's convinced that being close to him leads to people hating him, dying, or both. Assuming Miguel's backstory is the same up to this point, he's already at the lowest he's ever been. And probably stays there until he and Lyla develop the technology to travel between universes. Here's where the speculation kicks in.

Miguel finds another universe like his own. Another universe with another Miguel O'hara, except this one never became Spider-man. And this one never lost all of the same people that the other did. He and Dana got married, they have a daughter. They're happy. Not only does he have proof that it isn't just being close to him that gets people hurt, he has an opportunity. Because this other Miguel is dead, and this other Miguel isn't Spider-man. He could take his place and be free of his own unhappiness, his own burdens, and save the inhabitants of this parallel world the pain of losing him. And for a brief time he's happy, he doesn't have to be Spider-man, he has a family and a life that isn't full of danger and loss. And then he loses it all again, and is left once again with nothing but the feeling that it is his fault.

Further speculation, I think that's probably why he's so caught up with "canon"; it means that the losses he faced were inevitable. It makes him feel just a little bit better, a little less guilty. Yes, he's trying to protect other universes from possibly meeting the same fate as the one he caused to collapse, but he's also trying to make himself feel better in the process, even if he doesn't realize it.

Theories

This bit is going to be mostly unstructured, since I don't have any huge theories, just certain smaller points or plot elements I think are going to happen.

Miguel’s ties to Alchemax are going to come up, and they’re going to be important.

Alchemax is a company that originated in the 2099 comics. There has to be a reason they chose it for the company in Into the Spiderverse, because there’s dozens of other evil companies they could’ve chosen. But they chose Alchemax, the company Miguel has ties to, and then they set him up as an antagonist. It's going to be brought up, and it's going to be important.

Miguel and Miles will relate to each other

I say this because they're both very much outliers. They aren't their world's original Spider-man, they both have different powers and backstories than the other Spider-men. I feel like this is going to be called out, both as a way to call out Miguel's hypocrisy, and as a way for Miles to relate to him and find common ground.

Miguel was injecting himself with a gene stabilizer, or with something Rapture related

I know I'm not the first person to suggest the first part of this point. It makes sense--we know that the mutations from the spider DNA didn't all happen immediately. I also can't imagine that having your genome that dramatically altered is very good for you. I haven't seen anyone suggest the second part, but I think that's probably because it's not seeming very likely at this point. I don't want to rule out the possibility, though.

Peter B is going to be important to resolving the storyline with Miguel/Have a heart to heart with him

During the movie I got the sense that Peter B is trying to befriend Miguel, or at least to get him to open up a bit more. I think this is because he sees himself in Miguel. Yes, they're very different, but they're similar in ways that matter. Peter B looks at Miguel and he sees someone who's given up; on his principles, on his role, on his own life. Peter B has never been openly suicidal like Miguel, but before he met Miles he was still very much in the same spot. He had still given up on his ideals, on being Spider-man, and he made the choice to stay and destroy the collider not for a noble reason, but because he didn't care if he died. I think that Peter has recognized that same mentality in Miguel, and is trying to reach out to pull him back from that edge, like Miles did for him. I think the two of them have a lot of potential for some heartfelt interaction, and I hope I'm picking up on something that's actually there and intentional.

So that's pretty much it! This post is a lot more ramble-y and unstructured than I wanted it to be, but it was really just a way for me to get my thoughts out.

no one anywhere has been aware of how deep back in my marvel hole Im in

spiderverse made me snowball back to my insane spider-man brainrot to my equally crazy deadpool brainrot into my moderately crazy X-men brainrot into my loosely crazy general marvel brainrot

anyways I have only ever read daredevil marvel teamup comics with spidey and pool boy and like any other fucking marvel comic I've fucking read (getting back into my 2016 marvel rot really had me step back and think damn, I know a lot more about marvel than I thought damn... Like I usually dont think about it, and Im like marvel whatever and then I open my mouth and I sound like a redditor nerd basement dweller)

anyways-anyways I got side tracked from my original point

I started reading daredevil comics proper cause I always liked team red hee hee I just guess I never got around to investing my time in DD fr, but aint no time like the present amirite?? oh also I started watching the 2015 daredevil show :D

Ill prolly post art updates and stuff after artfight... my artfight game was kinda lacking this year... but I was busy and lazy sorry whoops

well, sign off did not mean to make this doodle post a minor life update but, I guess thats how it goes sometimes

Since I have no one to talk to about this Deadpool fanfic I'm writing, imma just post it here to get it off my chest.

Trans!Deadpool cause I wanna write something that hurts and be very queer.

Okay! SO!!!

It's a trans AU where Wade powers won't allow HRT and he never got to transition before getting cancer and his powers. And while he can still look masculine enough, the Avengers still misgender him cause they're jerks. The idea is how some cis people will misgender trans people that they hate cause "they don't deserve it". I plan on adding another trans character that the Avengers do gender correctly and there will be some drama on that. It might be Spidey cause 2ish years ago my plan was to write t4t Spideypool and then I got sucked into COD fandom for too long and then BG3.

Spider-Man doesn't misgender him, he's kind of part of the Avengers in this AU but not really and I think imma have Daredevil and Moon Knight be part of Spidey's "crew" since in the comics they all are kind of are meh about the Avengers. Like yeah they'll help the team out but mostly cause they're in the neighborhood.

I'm leaning towards Moon Knight was part of the Avengers and got kicked out because of the shit he pulled. Also I'm leaning towards Spidey and Moon Knight dating cause why the fuck is this line of thought canon:

LIKE MARC HAD TO HAVE THOUGHT THEY DATED ON SOME LEVEL TO THINK THIS! BTW this run is trash, do not read, I'm suffering through it just for more Moon Knight content. (Like I get it's a joke but I'm RUNNING with it)

I also am one of the very few people that ship Moon Knight and Deadpool and something about that pairing fuels me but tbh I ship Wade with almost anyone just to think about him. BUT I don't want this fic to be just about romance, like it'll happen cause I'm a sucker for romance drama, but I want Wade to have friends that care about him.

Like stomaching your coworker heroes being transphobic to be civil cause you got your dream job finally and feeling like your worth as a human being be in the gutter while also having low self-esteem totally sucks. And Wade doesn't have that many friends and the few he does use him like he has no feelings cause he makes so many jokes. Honestly I'll probably have him fall in love with his friends to get the drama going but probably will settle for them being polyamorous cause Wade deserves all the boyfriends

Anyways, I decided to combine another Deadpool fic I started where he was on secret mission and he was a stripper LOLOL so I'm moving some of those ideas over but instead of Wade being excited to be a pretty boy, Wade is depressed cause he's a lady stripper who "looks like Barbie with depression".

Superboy # 1 Review 

*Spoilers!*

I know I primarily post about Academy X here…but I have layers people and truthfully….X-Men kind of sucks right now…

So I am reviewing instead MY FAVORITE CLONE of the DC verse- Conner Kent AKA SUPERBOY!! 

The issue starts with Conner being super villain cockblocked…

Conner is feeling “replaced” and “inadequate” at Metropolis by all the Superkids around…which is kind of dumb considering no one in the DC verse is frankly as effortlessly cool as Conner…(I mean look how many times Diana has tried and failed to rock a leather jacket…) 

Conner then flies somberly back to Smallville, to bring back coffee to Ma and Pa Kent…who suggest Conner is wasting his coolness on Metropolis… (I heard Metropolis is super gentrified now anyway Conner!) 

Conner decides to go intergalactic and with an unstable teleportation device- teleports to a planet that’s being decimated by meta human clones based off of Earths superheroes and Cadmus cloning! (Well that’s super convenient!)

Conner battles the clones and let’s the 

Main villain- the Dominator (sounds like a BDSM Marston villain…but okay…) scenery chew for several minutes while the aliens of the planet evacuate, before really cutting it loose with his TK.

Just as Conner looks like he has won and confirms to the Dominator that he’s alone; the big bad releases ship upon ship of clones.

As Conner is regretting his choice to go at this alone- the Cosmoteers show up to kill all the clones and plan to kill Superboy!

Review:

Truthfully I am disappointed. Conner feels pretty “blah” here. 

Sure, we got some of the old Superboy ego and bullheadedness with Conner borrowing shady technology and totally not bothering to do any homework on the planet or the current conflict…But I felt like this book had pretty limited humor and snarkiness that readers more or less expect with characters like Conner.

It would be like if Hellion lost his “mean girl” edge to suddenly be written more or less like Sam Guthrie…

Reading this- I felt like it was often copying Kirkman’s “Invincible” (the meta humans even LOOK like Kirkman/Walker characters!) than really being a “Superboy” comic…

The problem with Conner, much like the problem with Laura, is Geoff John’s pretty much tanked his prior personality years ago… 

Where Bendis totally killed Laura’s introversion to make her a generic “Logan”- John’s stopped having Conner be a total shit. 😕

It’s weird comparing it to the 90’s solo series- I know people complain about Conner being sexualized/“jailbait” in it now and his relationship with Tana being problematic…but the series was at least a fun commentary on current pop-culture of the time. Conner kind of IS the perfect character to talk about Social Media/shameless self promotion/influencer culture…Yet this book has none of that. 

Conner should frankly HAVE an edge and yet he feels pretty dang generic in this book. 

Much like Deadpool and Plastic Man- I think writers really struggle with writing these kinds of characters anymore. 

You need someone who can write comedy and is willing to take risks instead of playing it safe…you need someone who has an eye for social criticism…you need someone who can break the fourth wall effectively without it becoming generic or annoying…and you need someone who can be pretty creative…and I just don’t think DC and Marvel HAVE these kinds of writers staffed there anymore. 

Even Gail Simone, whose Deadpool run I LOVE!…her “Plastic Man” mini several years ago was pretty disappointing and played it pretty safe, in my opinion.

Part of the problem is- a lot of these characters feel sanitized to fit into the “superhero mold” they were originally created to criticize. Where they were originally SUPPOSED to be more or less outsiders of the world they inhabited…now they’re focal characters of the universe.

I am glad however that the writer went back to Conner having TK instead of generic “Superman” abilities- I HATED John’s for removing it. 

Overall I thought the art was pretty “meh”. Not terrible but not memorable either. 

Con’s telekinesis looks more stylized off of QQ and other telepathy/telekinesis- which is a bit disappointing.

I was confused if the Domineer is supposed to be Citadelian? I am always surprised more isn’t done with them, since they were always pretty frightening… (and I just want Tamaraneans to pop up!) 

Overall- I would have rather had Conner do something in Hawaii again or Young Justice stuff or in a Mongul “War World” type of situation or pretty much anything else than where this story is gonna go (him befriending Cosmoeers and realizing he doesn’t “have to do things alone”….

Predictions:

Obviously “befriending Cosmoeers/realizing he doesn’t have to go at it alone” story…

hello i am hawkeye fan by which i mean "a fan of what hawkeye could be but seldom is" and i've read all of the fraction/aja run but haven't really read many other hawkeye comics!! what do you think are the best ones that showcase him? especially if there are others that have characterization in line with the fraction ones 👀

most ppl who love the fraction characterization end up loving Thompson and Rosenburg runs so I'm gonna start there and add some personal recommendations at the end

•Tales of Suspense #100-104 (Rosenburg, 2017) Clint and Bucky team up!! Very fun, weird but fun

•West Coast Avengers (Thompson, 2018) Clint leading the West Coast Avengers, another fun comic

•Hawkeye Freefall #1-6 (Rosenberg 2020) first Clint solo in years, extremely well received, much more serious and a good character study for current clint imo

•Black Widow #1-15 (Thompson, 2021) has Clint in it post-freefall up to like issue 10 I believe? Not my personal favorite but im not gonna get into that

Additional recs:

•Secret Avengers vol 1&2 (I haven't read this yet bc collecting it is a pain since multiple volumes with the same name but if you use marvel unlimited it's easier, but I've heard it's good, it has Deadpool and I've seen the screenshots and there is a huge Clint secret spy focus, but very heavy, set after fractions run)

•Hawkeye vs Deadpool (2014) my first and personal favorite Clint comic even if he's a grumpy boy the whole time

•Thunderbolts (2022) careful w this bc Clint has led two thunderbolts teams at this point but since it's recent it should be easier to find. Better follow up to freefall than Black Widow was, but it's a team centric comic more than a Clint centric comic but nice to know how the guy is doing after freefall tbh

Anyways I'm gonna stop there bc there are very many Clint comics but these are the ones that fraction fans tend to generally like from what I've seen?? Honestly you don't have to read all of them, just picking one and jumping in is probably fine, most writers lately don't need a lot of context to get the general gist of what's going on

Hope you enjoy!!!

hi im sick and delerious but i want to say that i look up to your art so much... not only that but the way you write, characterize, and tell stories is so fascinating — to name a few i love the fillyjonk origins post and the dialogue of both moominpappa confrontations and the fuzzy Mafia au and of course the sun dog au!!! youve inspired me so so much and your comics motivate me to let myself indulge more into the fandom and make my own stuff (tho it will take a bit of confidence to post it, thats another story)

anyways, love rant aside, im curious : do you have any characters of your own, unrelated to fandoms? if so id love to see them/hear you talk about them !!

(ahem, and if you have time id also love to hear your writing process and how you structure comics to tell a story... sorry if this question doesnt make sense the sickness is catching up to me)

bye now im off to make a warm mug of milk to cure The Soul

AAAAAAAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! It really means alot to me and that my stuff inspires you!! 💕

I had my own non-fandom OCs waaaayyy back before I even entered the SU fandom and back when Sony Sketch had a social media feature (which was ages ago - around 2015 to 2017 I think?) and I haven't touched them at all. Alot of them were random characters I made up while drawing or here-and-there concepts I just wanted to make, and quite a few of them were inspired by Greek mythology since I had a hyperfixation on it for a bit.

(I still have a few more but I couldn't squeeze them into a collage format)

They were a surprisingly diverse cast that didn't necessarily belong in the same world but I always had alot of ideas that I needed to get out and they didn't necessarily have to be used or drawn more times (although it would be very interesting for me to redraw/redesign a few of these fellas)

As for my comic making process? Hmm... I don't think I have anything too helpful to say. When I make a comic I start out with an idea I really wanna draw, it can be either a vague concept or a fully formed conversation/scene. I go into my drawing program and do the drawing first, then the dialog. It's a matter of going with the flow - sometimes the dialog you write isn't the dialog you thought about in your head earlier and that's perfectly fine, the main goal I have with my comics is getting ideas out there or to get a laugh from atleast one person out there.

My comics outside of the SunDog AU aren't any serious business and my mindset for them isn't super serious either. They're not meant to be the next Watchmen or Deadpool and that's okay! They don't even have to look good or be super well-written, they're fandom comics meant to fill a small niche and only a few would appreciate and that's it! It's about the fun of it!

Where can I read MCU comics? Like do I have to buy them all? Is there someplace online?

Ah, babe. I can tell that you genuinely mean this but like. The MCU stands for "marvel cinematic universe". Cinematic, as in cinema, as in film & tv. I'm pretty sure you mean marvel comics - although maybe you actually do mean comics based specifically on the MCU? I sometimes see comics released just before movies summarizing the story so far, but it's not much more than screen grabbing and sticking some speech bubbles on top so I assume not.

Anyway! Getting into marvel comics. I'm obligated to mention that pirating is a thing, and then encourage you not to, not bc marvel specifically deserves your money or that pirating is evil, but bc the comics industry is evil and built so if you pirate comics, esp newer comics, you're essentially guaranteeing you'll never see your favorite characters in print ever again. It's fucked up but there you go.

Easiest way to read comics is as intended: go to a comic book shop and pick up a comic or a volume. The great things about your local comic book shop is that the people there (workers and sometimes random customers) can help you pick something to start with depending on what would interest you specifically.

Another way to get into marvel specifically is the Marvel Unlimited app (there's apparently a DC equivalent, but it's not available where I live 😡). It's a subscription service, best used on a tablet but I use it on my phone as well. They have basically every marvel comic ever on there - except for some of the newest releases - and they have reading guides, too, although some of them are better than others. I love the Marvel Unlimited app, personally, because it means I can try a character on without committing to owning a comic and still support the creators.

Another method is the comixology app and amazon, where you can buy digital copies of single issues and stuff. I've never utilized this option so I can't give you many details on it. Also, if you buy a physical copy of most issues, there's a code in them for a digital copy that's good for about six months after it's printed. I used to redeem them on the marvel website but haven't done that in years, esp now that I have marvel unlimited, but sometimes people will sell or give away the codes bc they have the physical copy anyway. Idk that's all like, bartering stuff.

Finally, you can just order comics off of Amazon, book depository, find them in regular book shops, etc. This is fine if you know what you're looking for, but if you're just getting into comics, I'd suggest at least looking up reading guides for your favorite characters online. Goodreads has literally a list of every Deadpool main title comic book ever in order, for example, but there's a lot of fan made ones (like the spider Gwen reading order I posted!). Honestly, if you're not going to go to a comic book shop, or even if you are, I recommend doing this anyway - just googling "character name" + "reading order" and seeing what looks interesting. Keep in mind a lot of your favs have been around for decades, and getting into the comics will be intimidating. Sometimes it's best to just pick a random volume 1 (or volume 0) off a shelf and read.

Something you should note is that there's two main ways of consuming comics: single issues and collections, usually in the form of trade paperbacks ("trades"), which collect anywhere from four to seven issues, or sometimes one special very long issue (the wedding of Deadpool comes to mind). Single issues are collector's items as well as the way to consume the newest content; it's also how you'll be reading if you're using an app like comixology or marvel unlimited. I personally prefer reading in collected volumes, usually trades but not always, because that puts the story in order for you, especially in cases where, for example, the story was a crossover or had a special issue that isn't technically included in the run (like annuals, which are special issues supposedly released once a year). Hardback trades exist, but are rarer, and are usually rereleases of already popular paperback trades. Another format is the omnibus, which is a bunch of trades in one very, very large book - baby's first omnibus is going to be the upcoming gwenpool omnibus and I'm very excited. They're a great way to get more bang for your buck, but it's also a big down payment if you don't know if you're going to like something, and it's usually easier to get your hands on trades anyway.

Anyway, tl;dr: pick a character you like, google their name + reading order, then head to your preferred app or local comic book shop and go nuts. I warn you, this is not an inexpensive hobby, but it is a very fun one. At least in my opinion.

Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness Review

welp, this is my first post on Tumblr and I thought it's quite fitting to post DS:MoM with how unique..... and strange (no pun intended) it was!

so for the other poor souls who are getting spoiled left and right by unaware tumblers and/or aware ones:

if you have seen it or don't plan to see it (you don't care about spoilers), then this post is for YOU!

uhm.... how our Wanda went from "I never meant for this to happen" to proceeds to decimate countless people without hesitation?

I mean, I remember the last scene of Wandavision and her using the Darkhold book but to me that was more like "shit, she is learning forbidden magic and it may allow her powers to increase and grow out of control" rather than losing her mind and creating mass destruction!

some said that Darkhold and it's potential was explained in Agents of Shield? so yeah, for those who have seen it might be less shocking to see her acting like this.

me? to be honest, I didn't expect it at all. No, NOT her going against Dr.strange, I meant the way she acted and talked. I don't remember WandaVision much but Agatha didn't seem.... out of control? maybe having been a Witch for a long time didn't impact her much unlike Wanda who was going through trauma and maybeee it allowed Darkhold to control her more than she could control the book?

overall, the first 30 minutes where we see her did take me out of the movie because of the way she talked and acted and this comes from someone who has seen trailer Easter eggs and breakdowns so I knew what kind of plot the movie was heading. maybe Raimi's and Waldron's styles effected her characterization? (I think it definitely did). because she IS powerful, we know that by the comics and the movies but the thing is, her getting mentally out of control, not listening to good reasons AT ALL tells me that there was a story that happened off-screen and it happened and us audience didn't get to see it (MCU pulled the same shit on professor Hulk) so excuse me for being shook when Wanda talks in the first 30 minutes.

I hope there is a director cut for DVD release because I think some of the sites said that the movie was supposed to be more than 2h and 30m??

I really liked the horror elements, the soundtrack kinda reminded me of those 90s/2000s teenage witch movies??

but again, to be honest, some camera shots and scene cuts kinda took me out of the movie, NOT in a bad way. it's really MCU's fault, I have to say, because 90% of MCU movies felt the same to me. the famous marvel formula that you hear often when it comes to criticizing its movies.

This movie??? it didn't feel a marvel/Disney movie to me that much, I felt like it was made by a different company and it's sooo funny because I watched Raimi's spider-man trilogy when I was a child (I didn't know who the guy even was until a year ago) and I didn't even see Evil Dead!!! (just some scenes here and there from YouTube) but to me, this is the most evil dead vibe in a non-evil dead movie that I have ever seen! XD

anyways, I rate it 7 out of 10 (sometimes it gets 6.5 out of 10) for its boldness, strangeness, for its nostalgia (even for movies I have never seen) and its use of horror and gore (which MCU desperately needs if they want to introduce Deadpool and Xmen).

I took 3 points out of it for the lack of "Wanda's path to this level of evil" plot that was taken from audience

for cutting the movie to 2h (I felt it, they tried their best to hold the plot together with the short time and the events that kept happening BUT the ending was kinda rushed)

and for the appearance of Illuminati (I didn't read ANY Illuminati comics but gods! they were useless! I know Wanda is goddamn powerful, even his son, Billy but come on! all six of them are not some minor superheroes and I'm not saying they shouldn't have died but they definitely should have lasted much longer, held more against her! so to me, it came off as if they were a bunch of over-confident jerks that not only lacked skills to do their jobs but also rise questions such as "how did Illuminati last this long???" and I'm really sorry if anyone was a fan of this group and was hyped up for their appearance :/

emily antonia. she/her. prehistoric millenial. a relic of the Before Times.

obligatory welcome post. this is a marvel sideblog. i follow from @sithdownani.

about me: i still have the original .zip file containing every single issue of marvel's civil war that i downloaded in 2010. old enough to remember printing copy-pasted a"friend"gers tower-era fanfics from livejournal so i could read them in the middle of my university history classes. literally wept for joy when they announced avengers 1 was greenlit by paramount studios. i am ancient. don't mess with me.

what i like: tony stark. steve rogers, a.k.a. peter's original father figure. deadpool's sparkly nail polish collection. wandavision has been my otp since kindergarten. wanda and pietro are magneto's kids period. the one where literally everyone adopts peter parker.

favorite fandom tropes: clint in the vents. peter, resident Youth of avenger's tower, eating peanut butter straight out of the jar at 2 a.m. steve sleeping on a grease-stained sofa in the corner of tony's workshop. bucky and sam: special guest stars on brooklyn 99. coulson will always be everyone's favorite. kate and yelena are everyone's problem.

what i do not like: people forgetting that a lot of these comics were written for kids who felt (and feel) like outsiders. x-men gave my weird ass a place to belong in my youth and i'll be damned if that wasn't the entire point of the series. fandom drama. discourse in general, but especially discourse that reads like a disagreement between unhinged eighth graders. The Bad Ending.

under the cut: myspace survey from 2008 (to really drive home that i am too old to be here) in case, for some reason, you want to know more about me:

1. Ever been to a professional sports game? i bleed los angeles blue

2. Ever get engaged? yeah. i'm getting married about it.

3. Have you ever been on TV? yes.

4. Ever been to prom? only under duress.

5. Ever stayed up for 24 hours or more? i once hallucinated a blue coyote running across all 15 lanes of the southbound 405 through some part of orange county because it was 3 a.m., i'd just ended my third consecutive 12 hour work shift of the week, and my daily commute was 2 hours one-way

6. Have you ever been to a concert? favorite performance i ever saw was a defunct j-pop boyband front-man who happened to be playing at the nokia club for mysterious reasons

7. Have you ever been in a car accident? sideswiped by a big rig the day of my university music department audition. got a scholarship for showing up anyway.

8. Did you ever learn another language? studied classical latin in high school because apparently i had big plans for updating the roman empire

9. Do you wear make-up? you mean modern war paint? i sleep in it, baby

10. Ever caught the stove on fire? once caught the house on fire with a loaded drier and burned the entire place to the ground

11. Ever meet someone famous? in my misspent youth i was almost internet famous for writing a novel about two guys who ate a lot of ramen and beat the shit out of each other.

...so yeah, that's me. 'sup.

Good morning my beloved (or at least, it is morning for both of us when I am sending this but hopefully you've gotten to sleep in) and I just wanted to say two things:

1) yes I got your asks and I am so hinged right along with you I love your blorbos like they are my own <3

And 2) I can so so relate to your just wanting to be like "normal" girls but knowing in your bones you'd never be able to be like them. That was my whole childhood, both before and after I started socially transitioning, bc it's like,,,,, you (general you) just want so badly to be normal and yet you know you never will be and it hurts, and it's like mourning something you (general you) never lost in the first place, if that makes sense?? And I'm sure you hear this all the time, esp from people older, and so I'm so so sorry to say it again, but it does genuinely get better as you get older, I promise. You may never be a "normal" girl with "normal" interests and capabilities, but like you even said right in your post, yeah your roommates are cool, us tumblr mutuals are cool, and you're learning who you are, and that's amazing and wonderful and you deserve every bit of joy you get from that

The usual disclaimer of I have severe brain fog applies, but also: you really are epic, I promise, and if you ever need anything just lmk, not that I'd be able to do much across the ocean but I almost always can listen, and I love you very much and good luck and everything <33333

Tomas if I hadn't asked for your hand in very serious and legally binding marriage already that would've sealed the deal. Actually let me get the image again because the sentiment is still there in my heart.

Okay I needed to say it. So. In order:

I did sleep in! I love sleeping in. Sleeping in my beloved. I slept in, did my groceries like the adult I am (and I'm eating both fruits & veg's AND candy, god I love just buying my own stuff), took a shower, and ate pizza in front of the two Deadpool movies. Great day, would do again.

1) well they can be your blorbos too for the low low price of uh - actually it's not a low price it's a good like at least dozen hours just for season one of Daredevil, and that's probably shorter than trying the comics. But. Low low price of a dozen hours and some violence on screen. Otherwise I can keep telling you about it in increasingly detailed rants I love doing that also <3 one thing we'll have in our beautiful home once we're very legally bindingly married will be a big box for hinges at the door the way people have shoe racks. You put your hinges in it when you come in because we want the least hinged environment possible. <3 <3

2) yesss I knew you'd get it, former weird girls assemble and such. I guess I'm not fully out of the weird girl woods, but also maybe if you ever were a weird girl she's always inside of you 🤔 anyway. I know it gets better I'm seeing it real time!! I made cooler friends in high school and I'm making even cooler friends in uni & outside of it and keeping only the best. I'm wearing clothes I like after years of slowing replacing my kid wardrobe with long term pieces. I know what I like and how I like it and by that point I know that like, there will always be someone who'll notice me and like me if I'm loud enough about myself.

It's just the combo of weird girl + aro(ace) + some flavour of neurodivergent. I want to be more spontaneous and meet people and try dating things but my brain's need for structure and my impressive aura of non-romanceability are not helping.

Like you want to be normal but you don't want to become normal, you just want to always have been!! Because by this point becoming normal would be both painful but also just straight up impossible. It's like ADHD in that I am mourning this ethereal potential that rationally I know doesn't exist and never existed.

I just feel like I'm both too young to be here but also already late, which of course you're going to feel like that if you compare yourself to others, but y'know. People older than me at the same stage of life are doing more standard normal things and hitting milestones I should be hitting, and my younger cousins are cooler than me and have boyfriends/girlfriends. My younger brother's going to have a better mark on his first real degree and bring someone home earlier than me, and my only accomplishments of speaking english and having gone abroad will be nothing compared to everyone else hitting milestones Better than me somehow. Anyway. The point is comparison sucks because the only good time for me to hit any milestone is when I do it, because I'm living my life and not anyone else's, but y'know. At least I think most people that actually matter in my life think I'm cool so eh.

WELL. Thank you for the space to be unhinged about many various things. I think you're biased in thinking I'm epic but since I'm getting a good grade in friend I'll take it honestly. You're also epic, I give you a 20/20 in friend and a ring that both is practical so you can wear it even while doing manual tasks and elegant because you are of course worth it. I hope YOU have a good day when you read this (because you're probably asleep/preparing for Morpheus so you should see this in the morning) and I love yoouu <3 <3 <3

I’m laughing my ass off. This reminds me of when I was at a fannish party back in... 2012? 2013?

One of the hosts excitedly asked us if we were into MCU. I said yes, and she aggressively shoved her art portfolio at me. It was entirely manips of Stony. I loathe MCU Stony. I also don’t like manips, but it was really the ship that stuck with me. Because she didn’t ask if we liked Stony but whether we liked MCU.

Anyway, that’s a longwinded way of saying that while I was “in” MCU for a hot second, that doesn’t mean I was in that part of it.

I ignored Iron Man 1. I was too angry at how its unexpected success destroyed any chance my beloved Speed Racer had of breaking even. Speed Racer is one of the most aesthetically adventurous films of its decade and offensively underrated at the time. (Hilariously, all the film bro blogs changed their tune in like 6 months, years faster than I expected.) It’s one of the only films I’ve seen multiple times in the theater. (The others being The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which was similarly buried by another film, and Deadpool 2.)

A while later, I was looking up fanvids that use music from Highlander as part of making a vid to mess with a friend. She said any song can be used for anything except for that one because it belongs to Highlander. She was joking, but I thought it would be funny to use the song for something else... only I couldn’t remember which one she’d said, so I used both Princes of the Universe and Who Wants to Live Forever to make fun of all the emo Sherlock vids post S2.

I was shocked to discover that talitha78 actually had vidded Who Wants to Live Forever, and it was a really shippy vid of something I hadn’t seen and didn’t even recognize. So that’s how I watched Captain America: TFA. I have one great narrative weakness, and it’s people being fake or temporarily dead. Needless to say, when I found out what happened with Bucky in comics, I was very interested.

I got into MCU at that point, right before Avengers came out. I ate a lot of shawarma.

Avengers made me ship Science Bros like mad. Bruce was hands down my fave. I also read some Pepperony on LJ. I find MCU Tony insufferable, but I liked his vibe with both Pepper and Bruce. I also read some Tony/Pepper/other dude OT3s, even Tony/Pepper/Steve despite me thinking MCU Stony was intensely chemistryless at the time.

But honestly, the fic I probably read the most of was something I didn’t even ship myself: Clint/Coulson. I loved Coulson. I love characters coming back. And I’m weak for tropey handler/asset. C/C at the time was practically just original m/m with faces grafted on, and there were some great fics.

I also read a lot of trashy Mary Sue Darcy fic. That was everywhere in 2012. Darcy joins SHIELD. Darcy is Coulson’s secret child. Darcy dates Coulson. Darcy fucks her way through the Avengers. Darcy has a freaky blue baby with Loki. Darcy fucks Jensen from The Losers. (In fact, there is more Darcy/Jensen than a bunch of MCU ships that actually make sense.)

Then The Winter Soldier came out. I walked in a stucky shipper. I walked out thinking “Bucky who?” I was blown away by how that movie, like Cap1, is off in its own aesthetic universe. The whole film, I kept going “Oh my god, it’s Three Days of the Condor! Right down to the color palette!” Imagine my amusement to find out that the directors were calling it “Three Days of Captain America”. I was also blown away by Sam. The imperturbable friend who’s too sane to crumple under your bullshit! My weakness!

After that, I read a bunch of fic with Sam, Steve, Natasha, and Bucky in various configurations.

So, okay, yes, I did read some stucky. But even back then, I was seeing a rise in stucky-only fans whose work wasn’t so much my thing. There was a lot of lipservice to “historical accuracy” and fellating of anybody who’d read Gay New York and wanted to show off their learnings. I’ve read that book, and it’s great, but the attitude made me roll my eyes. In my experience, “historically accurate” just meant justifying some specific kink for femme Steve with Steve as a fairy and Bucky as trade. (More on what those referred to in this book review. Basically, femme vs. masculine guy who fucks women and femmes.)

I drifted away from MCU some time after that. I’m not good at staying into canons that are too sprawling or things that are too popular in general, especially if they’re very OTPy. (My stay in BTS fandom is shockingly long for me. I chalk it up to the sheer quantity of OT3s and multishipping.)

The big thing I noticed was that in addition to a lack of fic about Sam, a lot of what there was was distinctly boring. People were afraid to write iddy trash for obvious reasons. Not so with stucky, which has always been iddy trash central. Curse The Winter Soldier for robbing me of my ability to care!

I was excited about the idea of Bucky and Sam in a buddy show despite not having seen MCU in years, but friends’ reviews made me think it would be a letdown, and I haven’t bothered to watch.

I don’t know the big internal dramas in stucky fandom after I left MCU. I’m sure they have been legion. I get the impression that many of them have boiled down to “You are more popular than I am, and that is not okay.”

It’s such a large ship and has so many OTPers who don’t necessarily interact with other parts of MCU fandom that I don’t know how many of those dramas have leaked out elsewhere. MCU is like Harry Potter fandom in that way: there are tons of completely separate camps, and one might or might not be in multiple of them. It’s not even a question of disliking each other: it’s just too big to be in all of.

Given how overwhelming and hard to get into Stucky is at this point, I would just read the fic and not worry about interacting--unless you want to? TBH, ships like that aren’t that easy to get into in a social sense. I’ll still read the occasional fic if I get a rec. I read that one where they go to the Captain America film festival, and it’s a hilarious parody of gay French art films and subtextually homoerotic 1980s US action movies. I also read that one where Steve contacts a professor of queer history looking for info about his past friends and Bucky bugs her office. (I’m certainly not immune to the history nerdery. I just find it lulzy when people go “FACT!” and mean “I love femme Steve!”)

Red Robin....yum

Sorry I legally had to add the yum. But let’s take a look at the Red Robin (2009) series by Christopher Yost and Fabian Nicieza. I just wanna go over some parts of the series that are misunderstood or maybe misrepresented by people who haven’t read the series. 

Yost wrote issues 1-12. Nicieza wrote issues 13-26. Yost is primarily known for his works on the X-Men animated shows. Yep that’s right not only another company but another medium. 

That is all he’s written for DC. You might note Battle for the Cowl as it sucked horribly. Why he was allowed to write Tim Drake’s solo series I’ll never know. 

And Nicieza is known for wait let me check... X-Force comics. That’s right more Marvel mutants. You might recognize him as one of the creators of Deadpool. Nicieza also wrote for Jean-Paul Valley in his solo series. Again who thought this guy should get Tim Drake’s solo??

Anyways that’s who’s writing Tim for context. Let’s get into the story. 

We begin with Dick Grayson telling Tim he’s giving the mantle of Robin to Damian and then Tim storms out. 

That’s the scene from Red Robin #1. Okay this is it. Tim’s entire life has fallen apart. Everyone he’s considered a parent is dead. His best friends are dead. And now to Tim it looks like his older brother is throwing him over. Over for a kid who in his eyes is someone who just tried to murder him once. 

But Tim is at his absolute lowest at the start of this series. Okay. Dick didn’t really have a choice his father is dead and his brand new child was dropped onto his lap while Bruce cosplayed as a caveman. He needed a way to keep an eye on Damian. And Robin is Dick’s so it is absolutely his right to give and take it. He was the one who recommended Tim to be Robin in the first place. 

But Dick didn’t just tell Tim you’re fired fuck off. He wanted Tim to be his partner and to stay with him. Tim ran off. Like Tim is allowed to be hurt by this don’t get me wrong. But the fandom has a habit of saying in an argument one person is right and the other person was being evil. That’s just so not the case. 

The other fanon idea is that Tim was abandoned by his family at this time and they thought he was crazy. 

Okay yes I can see how Dick turned his back on Tim completely here. No look Tim wanted to go look for Bruce. He didn’t want anybody’s help. Tim was basically running on a gut feeling anyways and Dick didn’t have time for that. As soon as he knew Bruce was alive he offered Tim his help. This is Tim making the active and knowing choice to leave Gotham and his place next to Batman to find Bruce. 

In issue #11 Tim returns to Gotham city and immediately begins working with Dick again right where they left off. There wasn’t any lingering animosity towards Dick. Just towards Damian and that started to lessen across the whole of the run. 

There is also the issue of The List which I’m just gonna link to another post cause I’ve gone over that before.

As well to completely disregard that a lot of Tim’s behaviors were ooc on purpose because he was going through a time of intense grief with so many of his closest loved ones dying is just not fair to the character. There is a point where Tim is bleeding out dying and all he hopes is that he’ll be able to see Kon again. This is not a comic of Tim Drake at his best it’s him at his worst and then he gets better. So I just hate to see it used as a blanket character sheet for how Tim Drake would act.

Okay that’s it. Those are the biggest things I see crop up in fanfiction. And obviously if you’re going for a specific AU then do whatever. But this is what was going on.

A Few Thoughts About Hurt/Comfort

I have been asked this month to make a post about hurt/comfort in Avengers comics. And I love h/c -- I actually have a massive number of WIPs right now that are h/c -- so I am very happy to talk about it! Anyway, this is not really all that planned out and this mostly turned into an excursus on Tony Stark's pain. I'm sure you're all surprised.

Like pretty much everyone else, I'm sure, I have found that everything lately has been... pretty tough. And the coping mechanism that really got me through last year and this year was reading and writing a lot of h/c, on the theory that, however lousy a day I'm having, I can absolutely make sure that Tony Stark has a worse one. And then I can make sure he gets hugs. Wish fulfillment? Why, yes. (Once at Hallmark I was trying to find a "get well soon" card, forgot what it was called, and described it to my wife as "a hurt/comfort card.") I think Marvel Comics -- the Avengers side, in particular -- is an interesting canon for h/c for a lot of reasons. Though, honestly, if you asked me to recommend you, a hurt/comfort fan, a new fandom, I would probably just hand you some Starsky & Hutch DVDs. Go watch "The Fix" and get back to me later. If you like that, there's way more where that came from. But there's still lots to love in Marvel! Superhero comics are really a goldmine as far as the hurt side of h/c. Because superheroes, and you probably have noticed this, get hurt a lot. They get hurt repeatedly, in fantastical ways that are probably impossible in real life both physically and emotionally (at least, I don't think anyone's invented mind control yet), and even the heroes without superhuman healing powers tend to get physically hurt a whole lot worse than actual people can take. Currently in Iron Man comics, Tony has a broken back and is dealing with this by locking himself into the armor as a backboard and injecting himself with massive doses of painkillers. He's busy! He's got stuff to do! He doesn't have time to lie around and heal! So, basically, if you name a kind of pain that you would like to see happen to a character, it's probably happened to superheroes. Multiple times. The downside, though, is that comics do not really deliver that well when it comes to the comfort part of h/c. They could. It's not inherent to the medium that they don't. But because of the serial nature of comics and also the fact the primary audience is dudes who want to read about people in spandex punching each other, a lot of the time they don't really feel the need to provide closure and write about people dealing with any of the hurt. (Raise your hand if you're still annoyed with the end of Hickman's Avengers run.) But at the same time, I think that's a quality that makes Avengers ripe for h/c fanfic. Because, generally speaking, fandom likes to provide the things that canon doesn't, and fandom is more than happy to provide the comfort. If you enjoy canonical h/c in comics, I think you really can't go wrong with Iron Man. One of the big innovations of modern Marvel Comics was the concept that heroes would also suffer from relatable human problems, and in practice what this means is that a lot of heroes start with a fully-loaded angst-ridden backstory and origin story, ripe for h/c. So Tony starts out by incurring a heart injury that he fully expects is going to kill him, which he responds to by vowing he won't get close to anyone so they won't be sad when he dies, and throughout the early Silver Age is constantly on the brink of death as his heart nearly gives out on him practically every issue. And then even after his heart gets (mostly) better, there are various plots involving his armor being detrimental to his health and him choosing to fight on anyway. It's hard for me to think of another superhero hitting that particular variety of h/c in exactly the same way. Sure, superheroes risk their lives constantly, because this is how superhero comics work, but Tony is the only one I can think of who is this constantly this badly off, physically. Like, think of all the other heroes who have had a continual solo presence as fan favorites across Marvel history -- Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine, maybe even Deadpool. You know what those guys all have? Healing factors! For the most part, they are not running around continually on the verge of death, and while there are certainly memorable arcs involving several of them being severely injured and/or dead, you really have to work at it. It's not their constant state of affairs, whereas Tony is the kind of superhero who shows up to a fight already bleeding out under his armor. Yeah, I know Extremis gave him a healing factor. But he didn't have it very long, and also he did some extremely dangerous things while he did have it; I'm pretty sure I've never seen Wolverine saying that he'll just solve a problem by cutting off his own foot. So, anyway, yeah, there are a bunch of good arcs involving h/c for Tony. If you're looking for physical injury, he has a whole bunch of heart problems over the years, gets several new hearts, then ruins his brain, et cetera. That level of hurt is basically the background pain of Tony's life; every so often, his heart will get damaged or he'll have to live in the armor or the armor will be killing him, et cetera. If you're looking for more unusual trauma, I am, as always, going to rec Manhunt, a relatively obscure arc in late v3 (IM v3 #65-69) in which Tony has an extremely bad week. His tech is stolen and used to bomb a building. Then he gets shot in the chest. Then while he's at the hospital a nurse tries and fails to poison him, and she then tries to beat him to death. Then he checks himself out of the hospital and a helicopter shoots missiles at him. Then he becomes a fugitive from justice. And then, oh, yeah, he has to fight the Mandarin. It is... a lot. (Volume 3 of Iron Man is pretty good as far as h/c possibilities. You've got a lot of physical pain, Carol's drinking arc, the Sentient Armor, both DreamVision arcs, and Manhunt. Manhunt is finally supposed to be out in trade this month, by the way.) There are of course the drinking arcs, which probably count as their own type of hurt. But if you haven't read the second drinking arc (IM #160-200), please do. Marvel likes to up the stakes on events (Fear Itself, Secret Empire) by making Tony drink, and it does work, I think. I feel like I've spoken at length about Tony's drinking elsewhere so I don't really want to rehash it all here. And then there's the emotional pain. Angst and drama is something that happens to a whole bunch of characters, yes, especially in comics, but somehow Tony seems to end up with possibly more than his fair share of it. Fandom likes to make a lot of Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, so much so that you might think, if you didn't know canon, that this was just fandom running with a throwaway mention of Tony's terrible childhood and making it worse. But, no, canon really does go there with a reasonable amount of frequency. Howard's actual first appearance is in a flashback where he's ordering teenage Tony to break up with his girlfriend because she's the daughter of one of Howard's business rivals. And then we get into the verbal abuse, and the physical abuse, and the time Howard made Tony take his first drink, and the part where Howard was a demon in hell who Tony fought while he insulted him. And more! Currently, in canon, Howard is alive again and is in league with Mephisto for the express purpose of ruining Tony's life. Also when Tony was a baby, Howard tried to trade him to Dracula. I think you can make an argument that fandom is actually showing restraint when compared to canon. Tony also has a whole lot of Terrible Exes whose presence and/or former presence in Tony's life can be used for a lot of hurt. If you've read any amount of fanfic, you probably know that the exes who get the most play in fandom are Sunset Bain and Tiberius Stone -- not that Tony and Ty were ever canonically a couple, of course, but fandom is definitely enamored of this idea. Ty and Sunset both have relatively similar interactions with Tony in canon, in that they are both liars and emotional abusers, heavy on the gaslighting, with the purpose of becoming more successful than Tony. They both also attempt to murder Tony, although this is after he figures out they're evil, at least. (Yes, I know, this is not how either of them usually appear in AUs.) Tony also has a bunch of exes who also have just straight-up tried to murder or otherwise hurt him, sometimes while they are dating, and sometimes before Tony dates them: Whitney Frost, Indries Moomji, Kathy Dare, and Maya Hansen come to mind. There are probably more I'm not thinking of! But, yes, if you want to write about a guy in a series of terrible relationships, please consider Iron Man comics. If mind control is one of your favorite flavors of hurt, Tony's pretty good for that too. We all know about The Crossing. I suppose when I say "mind control" I mostly mean "armor control" because there are an awful lot of plots where someone else makes Tony's armor do whatever they want it to do and Tony is along for the ride -- Demon in a Bottle, Sentient Armor, and Execute Program are the first things that come to mind. There is also a fairly obscure What If that is What If Iron Man Lost The Armor Wars in which Justin Hammer apparently really wants Tony in a mind control collar to take off all his clothes and lounge around in his underwear. No, really. I think a lot of pain for Tony often revolves around his issues with control, generally -- his alcoholism comes into play here again. The entire aftermath of Civil War is also notable for its propensity to hurt Tony over and over and over. Is he stoically soldiering on through his grief after Steve dies? Hell, no! He cries, like, six separate times. He 100% blames himself for Steve's death. It's great. Everybody loves The Confession and the funeral in Fallen Son, but one of my personal favorites is Avengers/Invaders, in which Tony is confronted with a time-traveling Steve from WWII and in order not to screw up the timeline, he can't tell Steve he knows him. He is clearly not coping well. He shuts himself in a room with a giant wall of pictures of Steve! Also there's a part where he has to try to convince Steve he can trust him and he ends up having to tie Steve to a chair to talk to him, and Steve looks at him and asks, "Who did you kill to get where you are?" and I feel like that is probably one of the worst moments in Tony's life. No wonder he gave himself amnesia. So now we might want to ask, okay, but why is hurting Tony in fanfiction so much fun? I mean, I can tell you why I think it's fun. I can't speak for anyone else. One reason is that he is very emotional and very affected by everything he does. Sometimes you will see people complaining that the heroes of m/m fanfic cry too much and this is not realistic. This is not a problem if you're writing Tony! He can cry as much as you want and it's perfectly in character. I don't think it would be as fun to hurt him if he didn't express so much of his pain. But he does. He also feels guilty, and for me that's a very satisfying character element. If he were well-adjusted and didn't blame himself for so many things, it wouldn't be nearly as fun as watching him blame himself for everyone whose death he thinks he is responsible for, whether or not he is. And then he just keeps going, and it's, y'know, nice to watch him be resilient, too. So, I guess, I think hurting him is interesting because it's easy to hurt him, his weak points are pretty obvious, and he reacts a lot. Steve doesn't hurt quite as much as Tony does, in canon. It's certainly possible to hurt him -- I mean, they did actually kill him after Civil War, after all -- but I don't think the canonical patterns of hurting him are as numerous. Obviously deseruming Steve is a fairly popular go-to in terms of physical hurt; he's been deserumed at least three times that I know of. I think's easy to see the appeal there of taking a character who is fairly physically resilient and making him... much less so. Certainly Marvel seems to see the appeal. But other than that I don't think he has any other really common way to get physically injured. Unlike Tony, whose origin story is basically "oh no, I've acquired a disability," Steve's origin story is "I drank a serum that cured all my disabilities." Which, I mean, great wish fulfillment but there's not really as much there to poke at. Pretty much all of Steve's pain is emotional, but, unlike Tony, his pain isn't often specifically in response to someone directly, purposefully hurting him. Hickman's Avengers run is a big exception, yes. His pain seems to come up most often as a kind of situational angst. He feels like a man out of time. He feels out of touch with the modern era, with people his own age. He feels guilt because he feels responsible for Bucky's death. He feels like he can't trust the government and therefore he can't be Captain America. He worries that he doesn't know how to have a normal life. And, yes, these are deep and important worries but it's different than, like, Indries Moomji dumping Tony with the intent to make him sad enough to start drinking. Very few of Steve's villains want to personally ruin Steve's entire life the way Tony's villains do; mostly they just want to do things like bring back the Nazis. In terms of Steve's potential for h/c, I think Steve is harder to hurt than Tony is. Physically, he is definitely harder to hurt. You can deserum him, sure, but unless you want everything you write to be a deseruming fic you're probably not going to want to do that more than a couple of times. And if you want to hurt him physically while he has the serum, you have to hurt him hard. Usually past the point where a regular human would ever survive it. He's also harder to break, emotionally, than Tony is -- which means it's very satisfying when you can get him to break, but this is a guy who's only cried twice (that I remember) in canon. So if you want to get him to cry, you really, really have to wreck him, and he doesn't have as many obvious weak spots. He also doesn't generally sit around blaming himself for things that aren't his fault, and the whole "stewing in guilt" genre of plots for him basically came down to "he was sad that he thought Bucky's death was his fault," and that's really the biggest regret he seems to have, and also Bucky's not dead anymore. The Steve/Tony relationship itself, I would think, is also appealing to h/c fans because canon provides a lot of ways for them to hurt each other. Some people only ship pairings who would never, y'know, take turns beating each other half to death in major event comics. (And for a lot of Marvel Comics history, that was also Steve & Tony, so if you want them to be BFFs who have never fought, you can just set your fic earlier.) They have definitely hurt each other both physically and emotionally, so if you're looking for something easy and satisfying as a h/c fan, you can just read or write something where they... make up. What about Marvel characters other than Steve and Tony? Surely some of them are angsty, yes? Well, yes, but also it depends on the particular flavor of angst that you like. If you like the way Tony hurts, you may very well enjoy Doctor Strange comics, because they have a very similar attitude towards life -- they are both former alcoholics whose origin stories involve physical disabilities, who routinely make tactical decisions that negatively affect their continued existence and/or happiness a whole lot. It's very much an "I must suffer alone in the dark and no one will ever know what I am doing to save the world but it's the right thing to do" sort of vibe. Like, you can read comics where Strange is lying in hell with two broken legs, hallucinating that Clea has finally come to save him. Strange's biggest fear, akin to Tony's control issues, is basically that one day he's going to be an asshole again, so he's out there trying as hard as he can to do good. Also, if you like tentacles, he has all of them. I mean that. Carol also occasionally hits similar angst spots, and her drinking arc is great. A lot of people like Natasha, too; I have read zero Black Widow comics but I get the impression many people enjoy her brand of angst. The mutant metaphor is a little different in terms of overall vibe, but some people really like it as a source of angst -- the whole "protecting a world who hates and fears them" thing. It may not work for you, but if you like your hurt to include things like systemic oppression, go pick up some X-Men comics. Start with something like God Loves Man Kills. I feel like I liked this sort of thing a lot more as a teenager but that I kind of aged out of liking the mutants quite so much. It's also worth mentioning that not everything that hits the spot in one universe will be the same in the others, and I'm mentioning this because I feel like I have to say something about MCU Bucky. MCU fandom seems to get a lot of mileage out of Bucky's guilt about being the Winter Soldier, everything he was forced to do, et cetera. I have definitely read my share of those fics, and FATWS sure went right for that angst too. But as far as I can tell, he doesn't hit the same way at all in 616. And I like him a lot in 616; I'm always pleased when he shows up on a team. (He was so good in Strikeforce. Everyone was so good in Strikeforce.) But the thing is, 616 Bucky is, basically, phenomenally well-adjusted, given everything he's gone through, and I'm including the time he wrestled a bear in a gulag. He gets over having been the Winter Soldier, and now he's just, y'know, a guy with a cool arm who likes to bring guns to every fight to horrify his teammates, and he snarks at Clint. If you're looking for that angst, that is really not him these days. He's all better. So pretty much all that is canon. So what do we do in fandom for h/c? Well, as far as I can tell, a decent amount of it is canon-based or very canon-close -- there are a whole lot of stories exploring the angst of Civil War or Hickman's Avengers run. Tony's drinking comes up a fair amount, and if one of Tony's Evil Exes comes back to haunt him, it's pretty much only Tiberius Stone. I don't think I've read a lot of fic with Steve getting deserumed; it doesn't seem as popular in fandom as in canon. When Steve gets hurt, he tends to just get physically whumped pretty hard, and there's a fair amount of that for Tony too, but of course Steve can take more. There's also a thriving, uh, subgenre of pain involving Hydra Steve doing terrible things to Tony, presumably the terrible things he would have wanted to do to Tony in canon if Tony had had a flesh body. There's the usual kinds of h/c setups that appear in basically every fandom as well -- sickfic, whump, dub-con/non-con. You get the idea. But since fandom in general likes to take specific inspiration from canon, there's a lot of fic where the hurt tends to resemble things that happen more in canon. Like, I feel like comics fic probably has more tentacle fic and more mind control than canons that don't come pre-stocked with those. Probably everybody has a whole lot of "tied up by bad guys," though. And then, of course, fandom brings the comfort that canon does not. This is true in pretty much every fandom -- I mean, you aren't going to find a lot of actual canons where Character A saves Character B from mortal peril and then there's gay sex -- but, like I was saying, comics don't provide a lot of closure before it's onto the next thing. Usually with a different creative team, who has no interest in wrapping up anything from the last team. Steve and Tony talked about the incursions exactly once after Secret Wars and nobody mentioned the part where Steve spent several months trying to hunt Tony down and kill him. Tony is never going to remember the events of Civil War. Hydra Steve died ignominiously in a fire and no one has ever talked about him again. Honestly, if you're looking for a way to get some comfort in your fanfic, picking an event, any event, and just having the characters talk about it will be way more than any of them get in canon. I feel like honestly that can often be a pretty satisfying to read. And even though comics canon physically hurts characters pretty often and pretty badly, they also often skip right past the recovery. Maybe you'll get one page of a character in a hospital bed at the end of the story arc. Maybe you won't. Demon in a Bottle has one splash page of Tony going through alcohol withdrawal and then he's all better. I think Manhunt skips to Tony getting out of the hospital at the end. That's just not a story that they want to tell very often. The second drinking arc is notable in that it devotes almost as many issues to Tony's recovery as it does to getting him to rock-bottom. Similarly, Steve is done with his Nomad angst way way faster than you probably think he is (though The Captain does go in for a fair number of issues). So one of the things we often want to do in fandom is focus on all the bits that canon skips over, both in the "why did no one ever mention this story arc ever again" way and the "wow, so how long are they in the hospital after that" way. That's really all I can think of about h/c! I'm off to write some more of it!

A list of fandoms I'm in (in no particular order, will probably be updated regularly. Some fandoms are more intense and some are more casual. Depending on the fandom, I could go on and on about fandom topics for HOURS. Let's get into it!)

Harry Potter, Disney, Marvel, DC comics, Miraculous Ladybug, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Star Wars, Literature, Winx Club, Nintendo, Minecraft, Little Witch Academia, Voltron, Coraline

Details:

Harry Potter- I got into Harry Potter in 7th grade and now I am the resident expert in my family and in my friend group. I read all the books, watched all the movies (notably the British version), and I've seen the Fantastic Beasts films as well. I've also read Tales of Beedle the Bard (the Warlock's Hairy Heart was traumatizing) along with the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them textbook (plus an updated edition). I also read The Cursed Child script and while I mean no hate to anyone that liked it, I hated what it did to the canon. I am in Hufflepuff with some Ravenclaw tendencies (I took the Pottermore quiz 3 times, 2 out of 3 I got Hufflepuff, the other time was Ravenclaw). I had a pottermore account and I was so upset when it got converted to the Wizarding World page. I cosplayed Hermione in 7th grade complete with British accent and even monologued as her for a talent show (classmates and teachers would recognize me as the Hermione girl all the way through high school). I was obsessed and I still love it even if J.K. Rowling has gone off the deep end on Twitter... yeah... my favorite character is Hermione but I also relate to Luna

Disney- there's so much that goes into the Disney part of my fandom list. I'm excluding Marvel and Star Wars from this part as they were originally separate entities before Disney got the rights to them. I have seen almost every animated Disney film ever and often use random movie quotes in conversation. My favorite villain is Maleficent, my favorite princess is Ariel (followed by Belle, Rapunzel, and Anna). I relate to so many of the characters. I'm not sure who my favorite Pixar character is though (I love Violet, Sadness, Dory, and Piper (from the short)). My favorite Disney fairy is Fawn. My favorite characters overall are Ariel and Stitch. Disney is definitely on the list as one of my biggest obsessions. My favorite movies are Lilo and Stitch, the Little Mermaid, Inside Out, Alice in Wonderland (original), and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Marvel- I mostly get my Marvel exposure through the MCU, other movies, and animated TV shows. I have difficulty reading graphic novels so most of my comic book knowledge comes from friends, posts, or wikis. My favorite characters are Spider-Man, Captain America, Peggy Carter, and Scarlet Witch. I also like Gwenpool, Deadpool, Spider-Gwen/ Ghost-Spider, Venom, Squirrel Girl, Daredevil, Mantis, Gamora, Black Widow, Iron Man, Thor, Loki, Bucky, Black Panther, and most MCU characters. Out of the X-men I really like Professor X, Wolverine, Mystique, Magneto, Nightcrawler, and Quicksilver (either version- MCU or Fox).

DC- this was the franchise I was more familiar with growing up but again, graphic novels aren't easy for me to read so most of my knowledge comes from information pages about the comics or from tv/movies. My earliest experience with DC came from the 60s Batman series, with Catwoman and Robin being my favorites. I also watched the Wonder Woman series from the 70s and a handful of CW shows, my favorite of which being the Flash and Arrow. I also managed to watch all 5 seasons of the Teen Titans Cartoon Network series from 2003. With that being said, my favorite characters are Wonder Woman, Catwoman, Flash, Batman, Nightwing/Robin (Dick Grayson), Green Arrow, Starfire, Raven, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Alfred. I also like most of the bat family, and when it comes to CW I LOVE Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost and Cisco.

Miraculous- this is one of my guilty fandoms but since this is Tumblr I'm not too worried about it. I love Marinette and I relate to her on an astoundingly deep level (minus the stalking and obsession with potential lovers, that's creepy). If I had a miraculous, I'd probably want the Ladybug one, but the Cat miraculous, fox miraculous, and snake miraculous are good too. My favorite character is Marinette/Ladybug.

Atla/Tlok- I jumped on the avatar bandwagon just when it was starting to get popular, so I managed to get through the series before the memes took over everything. Same with Tlok, although i couldn't completely avoid the spoilers for that when i started it. I've been wanting to get into the comics because of the short story comics I've read, they seem easier to read than superhero comics. My favorite characters are Aang, Katara, Ty Lee, Iroh, Korra, Jinora, Asami, Suki, Appa, Momo, Naga, and Pabu. I also like Sokka, Mai, Zuko, Lin, Kuvira, Varrick, Zhu Lee, and Azula. I feel really sorry for her and while I understand that a redemption arc would undermine the importance of her corruption arc, I still wish she could have one. I would love to be a waterbender or an airbender... maybe a waterbender raised in the air nation? Obviously, being the avatar itself would be awesome. The show has taught me a lot of great lessons and put a lot of stuff into perspective for me.

Star Wars- oh boy, talking about this one is dangerous. I've seen firsthand the horrors of the Star Wars fandom but then again no one will probably see this anyway so... I've seen all the movies and I remember watching the clone wars series with my brother when I was younger but we fell wayyy behind and it's taking us forever to get back into it. I've also seen the Mandalorian and quite enjoyed it. I like the prequels unironically, in fact, the prequels are some of my favorite movies. I especially like how they switched from lightsabers being heavy weapons to light weapons that can be used for all kinds of tricks that make for epic battles like the ones we see in Revenge of the Sith. The sequels were fun to watch but when I would analyze them along side their predecessors, I came to the conclusion that, for me, they were good to watch but did not do anything good for the rest of the franchise. My favorite characters are prequels/clone wars Obi Wan and Anakin, Padme, Ashoka, Leia, R2D2, BB-8, R4-P17, the Mandalorian (Din Djarin), and Grogu. If I had a lightsaber I'd want it to be blue, but when I was little I got a purple one like Mace Windu because it was closer to pink and I was into pink at the time. I still have that lightsaber and none of my friends have a purple one so it's one of my flexes. I feel like I wouldn't make a good jedi because of attachments being forbidden, so I'd probably become a grey jedi.

Literature- this is a broad term I use to cover all the random books and stories I liked reading and have studied. So we have Shakespeare (Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet), The Great Gatsby (bored while reading, loved to analyze), Grendel (HATED reading, loved to analyze, Grendel really needed a hug and a friend), The Crucible, Fahrenheit 451, Dark Life (+ the sequel Riptide, both are by Kat Falls good reads, sci-fi and kind of dystopian), The Once and Future King

Winx Club- I think the show is trashy but I still love watching it. I haven't been able to get through season 6 though and I hated what they did with season 8 and Fate: the Winx Saga. My favorite character is Bloom along with Stella and Flora. I prefer rai to nick. My favorite transformations are magic winx, enchantix, and harmonix. My favorite member of the Trix is Icy followed by Darcy. My favorite Pixies are Chatta and Lockette.

Nintendo- mainly Pokémon above all else, followed by Animal Crossing. I have also played (mostly as player 2 or just never beat or watched my brother play) mario games, legend of zelda, pikmin, and kirby. Games I haven't played but I just liked the characters/the lore and probably learned about through Super Smash Bros. are Fire Emblem (Lucina mostly), Metroid (Samus and baby metroid), and Kid Icarus. Pokémon is where I'm most knowledgeable but you'll most likely beat me in battle. I am however great at MarioKart and I always destroy my friends at it. Terrible at fighting games though.

Minecraft- I like playing this casually. Sure, I'll play for hours and hours on end for months, but I prefer to stay exclusively in peaceful when playing Survival mode and I don't make anything too ambitious in Creative mode. I like to write, so sometimes I'll make a rough layout of the settings of my stories in different worlds. I prefer interior design and decorating when building, and when in survival mode I focus more on mining and gathering while my brother works on ambitious building projects. I just bring him the raw materials and furnish the interior when he finishes the outside.

Little Witch Academia- this takes up a smaller portion of my fandom list because there were only 2 seasons and a couple movies and I watched the whole series years ago, but I still enjoy it. At one point I wanted to cosplay Akko, and I loved the nod at Twilight through the Nightfall series. And I especially liked the twist that Shiny Chariot was Ursula, which I suspected for some time. The blend between magic and technology was fun to see, but I was so sad that the series ended RIGHT when Akko finally showed signs of magic proficiency. Also, Shiny Chariot being the reason Akko couldn't do magic was heartbreaking.

Voltron- this takes up a much smaller portion of my fandom list mainly because I haven't even finished it. I know hardly anything about Transformers aside from the Bumblebee movie so to me I just watch it for fun. It reminds me of power rangers, star wars, and star trek, and then there's just a transformer insert. But I don't know anything about Transformers so maybe the show is more rooted in canon than I think.

Coraline- I am in a love-hate relationship with Coraline. I have watched the movie several times, I've read the book, I've watched hours of theories and analyses on youtube, I've watched behind the scenes videos by Laika, and I even wrote a script for a fan film parody. I am amazed at how original the story is and how impressive the stop motion animation is but I also have recurring nightmares from it and it scares me/creeps me out to the max. If anyone asks what my scariness limit is, it's definitely Coraline.

Fic Writer Questions!

tagged by @palamedessextus 😊 thanks friend!

1) How many works do you have on AO3?

64! only five more to the magic number ayyyyy and then i’m legally obligated to never post another one.

2) What’s your total AO3 word count?

289,575 apparently??? which seems way way way higher than i ever would have guessed, wow. who knew!

3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

31 on ao3, although that’s lumping, eg, all marvel subfandoms together. but i have a ridiculous amount of wips in all kinds of other fandoms that i haven’t/won’t post, soooo.... more than that! and i don’t want to list them all bc that’d be a long boring read!

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

it serenely disdains to destroy us, a magnus archives fic that, i somewhat vainly note, has been orbiting in the top few top kudosed fics in the tag since i posted it womp womp.

concerning flight, because we all thirsty for thor/loki+gender and i for one support us.

untitled porny snippet (yes that’s actually what it’s called), because same as above. (i see u, kudos-to-comment ratio and i aint mad but.... i see u. all you dirty birds out there shamefully yet silently jerking it. kudos to YOU.)

an experiment in posthumous subsistence, a batman/joker zombie au i wrote fucking TEN YEARS AGO ALMOST. why???? why is this fic so popular?? i’m barely a good writer now and i sure as shit wasn’t one a decade ago! the terrible title alone should disqualify it from being read, but i guess the people want what they want. and what they want is batman and joker handcuffed together, trying to escape the zombie apocalypse  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

all good things, some stucky hydra trash party-adjacent smut regarding piercings. i stand by this one 100%, it deserves every kudo(s?) tbh.

5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

i do, depending on the comment! i don’t think comments like “loved this!” / “thanks for writing!” are written with the intent to receive a response (or at least, when i write them on other people’s fics, i certainly don’t expect one). they’re like an extra kudo(s?), and i appreciate them a lot, but they’re not really an invitation to Discuss. whereas if someone clearly has put a lot of thought into a comment, or asked a question, or made some observations that i jive with, or just seems like they want to engage, then hell yeah i jump in there. love that shit. 

6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

i guess arguably thine own self, which is some hydra husbands abo. laugh all you want, it’s one of my fave of all my fics lmao. probably specifically bc of the unpleasant/open ending.

7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

probably moderation is a memory! since it, unlike 99% of all my other stuff, isn’t just total smut, and the whole point of writing it was to wallow as deep as possible in the sauce of giddy teenage infatuation, it got the opportunity to have an actual emotional arc (more or less). furthermore i could not possibly bring myself to break johnny lawrence’s tender little heart ever, that would hurt me far more than it would hurt him.

8) Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

i only realised while answering this question that apparently.... no i don’t write crossovers! which is not at all a deliberate choice, i guess a compelling enough one just hasn’t occurred to me yet! 

9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?

shockingly no! by some accidental miracle i’ve managed to fly under the radar so far, despite some of the really buckwild stuff i’ve posted. however, considering some of the stuff i’m probably ABOUT to post.... that clean track record might soon come to an end lmao.

10) Do you write smut? If so what kind?

lmao. uhhhh. almost exclusively, and i guess??? all kinds? this is clearly a question composed by someone who does not write smut.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of, and i wouldn’t really care if i did. 

12) Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think a few....? a number of people have asked anyway and i always say yes, so probably there’s at least one floating around out there somewhere.

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have! just once, and we really made it count. it’s called a reptile dysfunction, which should tell you all you need to know. 

14) What’s your all time favorite ship?

thorki, probably. i always have and always will come back to it, no matter what. it’s got such a ferociously timeless staying power and so much potential variation, i don’t think i could ever get bored of it, regardless of what level of marvel-exhaustion i might feel at a given time, or what tropes, kinks, or stage of literary pretension i’m at. truly the oh tee pee. 

15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

ohhhhh all 836575927 of them, but. there’s this one thorki fic i started almost ten years ago as an experiment with a new-to-me style, which turned out over the intervening years to become my main style, and looking back on that fic, which for many years was a touchstone of writing-to-aspire to for me, it’s actually Not Very Good lol. but i still love the core concept, which is a canon divergence berserker thor au, but not only is it a somewhat inaccessible (admittedly less so since the deadpool movies came out, which was a hilarious pipe dream back when i started writing it) x-force comics crossover, but i wrote myself into a bunch of corners and have yet to dig up the energy to write myself back out of them! i go and reread it every year or so and think “hmm... maybe now...” but tbh it’s just not really good enough to bother! perhaps someday i’ll repurpose the best elements of it into something new.

16) What are your writing strengths?

man, it’s so hard to say. in much the same way that you can spend hours every day staring at yourself in a mirror, yet be utterly incapable of picking yourself out of a lineup, i spend a lot of time eyeballing my writing, but stepping back it seems like a chaotic mass of nonsense with few cohesive throughlines. i’m good at writing smut, i know that much! and in that vein, i think i am good at smut bc i am very good at committing to the bit, as it were. getting into the nitty gritty of experience and sensation (physical or emotional) and rendering largely abstract internal concepts in fairly comprehensible ways. i think my prose is quite decent on a sentence level too.

17) What are your writing weaknesses?

utterly incapable of finishing anything! or plotting anything! can’t mange a cohesive emotional arc! write myself into overly structured corners or out onto a vast plain with no structure in sight! all the macro elements of storytelling totally elude me, which is very frustrating when i have all this tasty fleshed out micro-level character stuff, but no narrative skeleton upon which to drape it.

18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?   don’t! unless you are very sure you know what you’re doing, and the other language bits are a) very few, b) easily contextually understood, and c) actually adding something other than a weird flex that you know google translate exists.

19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?

11yo me wrote spock/kirk/janice rand and thought she invented the concept of a threesome. brand been stronk since day one 🤘. (the vulcan salute is right next to the devil horns in my emoji list, so....)

20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

i love the (ongoing) better with you series very much, not least because i’m still absolutely flabbergasted that i wrote something that long. i think it’s actually pretty good all things considered and it’s very dear to me on many many levels. but the fic that i just viscerally adore, that i love the style of, and that i had such a transcendent, invigorating, organic Experience writing, is temper its strength, adding honey until quite cold, which is a terror fic with the inexplicable pairing of edward little/hartnell, featuring crossdressing and gender stuff. it just burst out of me fully formed one day and i don’t think i’ve managed to top it yet! 

lowkey tagging @lingua-mortua @pitcherplant @kaasknot @froggy-babyy @deputychairman @nomercyonlytears @clockheartedcrocodile