how jonathan envisioned a future between nancy and steve would looked like: “…they (nancy) would marry a boring one time jock who now works sales and they’d live out a perfectly boring little life at the end of a cul-de-sac. exactly like their parents, who they thought were so depressing.”

steve’s dream future with nancy:

involves going on several adventurous family road trips — which clearly isn’t boring at all

specifically mentions learning a new sport — so he has no intention of being a one time jock

doesn’t mention any career aspirations — but steve does currently have a sales job at family video so…point one for jonathan i guess. but it’s kinda odd how jonathan was making it seem like working in sales was a bad thing when his mom had a sales job at melvards at the time

doesn’t involve living at the end a cul-de-sac — in fact steve’s dream centers on leaving hawkins

is the opposite of how his parents lived: traveling for the sake of business and leaving their kid behind in the meantime

it’s also the opposite of how nancy’s parents lived: in a loveless marriage and having kids just to check it off the list

and neither steve or nancy find this future depressing — i mean this is steve’s dream future after all and when steve told her about it, nancy smiled and said that it sounded nice

so no one cares but I’m gonna talk about this weird shipping war happening in stranger things fandoms rn after st4- I feel like im at a weird place w it bc i have tried to be active in both harringrove and st***** and have quickly realized that im in a VERY small group bc it’s become a pick a side thing like very quickly. So, well u can prob tell what side I chose lmao.

When it comes to St***** I obviously don’t have a problem w the ship itself (humble brag but I have a fic on the second page of the ao3 tag when u sort by kudos lmao) but I just no longer want to be associated with ANYTHING to do with that side of the fandom at all, which makes me sad bc there are some artists and writers that I rly respect!!! some lol!!!!

Okay but to be real even if this tension wasn’t happening I have p much changed course and have only been writing Harringrove bc I think their dynamic is more intriguing and Billy’s dialogue is more fun to write, plus tbh I think most of the fic I read for that pairing makes Steve completely out of character which drives me crazy. At the end of the day I just felt like the majority of the works read as very juvenile and with very little depth to them. It was obviously super fun and rly gratifying to see my work do numbers but I pretty much stopped reading fics for it right away which has made it hard for me to want to write for the pairing either even though a lot of people have said a lot of really nice things about my work.

I will say tho that it’s weird for me to even feel like I need to “pick a side” w this whole thing bc in any other fandom I’ve ever been in I’ve shipped and written for multiple pairings at once happily- but I hate how it’s become sort of competition? Like I have literally NEVER been in a fandom that cared about the total number of fics on ao3?? I’m so baffled that that could possibly matter to anyone. Obviously I’m intimidated mention the main problem ship by name because I don’t wanna get crucified lmao.  part of me wants to write a lot of this off as a difference in age groups because there is clearly a younger fan base that gravitates to certain ships and younger fan bases in general are less normal about the way they interact with people online, but it’s to a really uncomfortable point now. Also, to somehow concoct some random reasoning for how Edissy is “problematic” bc of a made up age difference, just bc it doesn’t support ur gay ship like y’all are so weird just let ppl live and ignore the shot you don’t like??? Anyways Idk what the point of this is lmao I’m just so frustrated!!!

honestly this probably sounds mean but idc one of The most braindead things this fandom came up with (probably aside from shoving darcy lewis everywhere with no rhyme or reason to have a white woman self insert into whatever gay relationship the author finds hottest) is steve/bucky/peggy like. im glad the days when ppl thought polyamory was just a magical solution to everything and made everything better are over but im still scarred by this bs

sdkjfkjs assuming this is the same person you keep sending asks that start out that way and i think i'm about to be attacked lmaooo

ANYWAY i found darcy entertaining in the thor movies and all but yeah it was??? so weird the way she was everywhere on ao3 like steve/darcy fics and bucky/darcy fics and whoever else and it was like.....they've never interacted with this woman which hey fair it's not like a requirement to like the concept of a ship but i mean i get that more when we're talking about ships between women since marvel never lets them interact like y'all we have plenty of ship options with actual substance with two men or a man and woman lmao like. there's no need to make up ships there. and it seems weird to me that marvel even brought her back for wandavision but i guess they kind of do that a lot to be like "oh look this character! they don't really fit here but here they are anyway!" (not that i can say for certain that's how it played out since i did not watch the show)

and YEAH i mean again i have read and enjoyed some steve/bucky/peggy fics but that was mostly before endgame or before my anger about endgame made that kind of content mostly intolerable to me and i do like some threelationships but i am so at a point where i rarely multiship even and even if i do i still have my preferred ship for that character so i'd rather just read that like even a few years ago when i did still like s/teggy i wasn't ever really reading it unless it was also a stucky fic like i didn't wanna read it on its own bc i didn't wanna read things where stucky weren't together. and now since endgame i REALLY refuse to read things where they're not lmao but yeah as i said before, i just do not see peggy and bucky being together along with steve because they obviously did not like each other! like maaaaaybe they would be okay with sharing for steve's sake but even that is a stretch imo

(1) I really appreciate your Steve meta, 3 years ago I didn’t really get his appeal. Which is weird because you then expect me to like, like Batman (I didn’t and don’t) but I always loved superman. I think he and cap are in some ways similar. CA just seemed so perfect and good, an ideal that wasn’t real. That came from certain experiences irl which helped shape certain expectations about ppl AND characters. And also the content that I consumed (especially in fandom).

(2)But now I see him for what he really represents, which is not an unrealistically good soldier clothed in an American flag and patriotism. He’s relatable and a really GOOD, inspirational dude. Sorry if my writing is weird, English is my fourth language.

(FOURTH language? Hot damn, anon, that’s impressive!)

While they are ideologically similar, I can definitely understand how Superman, in some ways, is more accessible than Cap; especially if you’re not in the US -- There is a lot of propaganda surrounding Cap, and on the surface, it can be hard to separate the character from that national symbolism and some of the shit America has done. Cap stands for the ideals of a nation, not necessarily its reality, but unfortunately we all tend to have more experience with the reality. Superman, meanwhile, though raised in America, is less explicitly tied to a specific nation. 

I do believe though, that there’s so much more to Cap than that cursory, surface view of the character (with its associations to existing world politics and attitudes) often leads people to believe --  hence all the meta -- and I’m delighted that you’ve come to enjoy the character! 

It took me a while to really appreciate Cap -- in high school, I was all about Frank Miller and *cringe* Mark Millar stuff, and everything dark and gritty because I was grown up and mature and could read serious, mature things. Then over time I actually grew the fuck up and realized the world is dark and miserable enough already, and it actually takes a lot more strength to be optimistic and kind than it does to be cynical and cruel. And that’s when I came to really, genuinely love Cap. :)

(part 1) ur gonna roast me for this but im legit curious why mafia AUs are so bad? im asking in a non confrontational way, i get it romanticizing mafia is wrong, but i also believe that 1)most mafia AUs are a really toned down type of mafia;2)they do make for some interesting kinds of dynamics with fanart and with fics; 3)in a fic specifically u can create your own world and call something mafia and still make it so they don't kill innocent people but only idk members of other gangs or sth

(part 2) plus theyre a way to put ur charas in a completely diff context and see what theyll do. i mean i dont believe that writing ships in a certain context (like mafia) equals romanticizing that context. mafia AUs arent even my fav things to read (in fact i almost never do), im sure many ppl romanticize it and i obvs dont agree with that but im just trying to udnerstand bc i believe fandoms are a way to explore things that we normally wouldnt.

I’m not gonna roast you don’t worry xD okay wait let me check if I replied to this already if yes I’m gonna c/p because it’s half past midnight otherwise I’ll just go at it again wait *checks tags* fff obviously I don’t have a general post but anyway pls read this after you’ve done with my post and then this which is also choke-full of links. plus for a (not nice) laugh: here. AH WAIT I FOUND THE POST.

okay, so, let’s have it out of the way: I have nothing against mob aus or crime aus. I have a problem against calling them mafia AUs because in the US mafia = organized crime at large, in Italy mafia = ACTUAL EXISTING ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE ACTIVELY HARMFUL. now that I introduced the topic I’ll c/p you the reply I gave to another anon who while discussing the issue pointed out that most writers don’t even know Italian mafia is a thing, which is pretty much on the same discourse so...

*The thing is - in the US it might not be enough of a deal anymore and I honestly do get why people make the mafia = regular mobsters, since the mafia was the first foreign organized crime being exported to the US via italian immigrants (sorry if this sounds horrible in English but I just woke up and I still didn’t have coffee) so I understand that mafia became the umbrella term.But the thing is that - as you said, these people don’t even know that there’s a mafia in Italy anymore or where the word comes from.

 I’m going to link to italiansreclaimingitaly’s tag about the mafia and its perception outside Italy because they posted about this extensively and it’s an excellent resource, but meanwhile I’m gonna do a very short bullet point list and about the topic:

Mafia might not be a big deal in the US, but it still is here. We have the beauty of four different mafias (Cosa Nostra - the Sicilian one, camorra which is the one in Campania but has tendrils spread everywhere, the 'ndrangheta which is in Calabria and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia) which are all active [especially camorra and 'ndrangheta] and whose actions have direct impact (negative) on our economy and on our society. Actually mafias are one of the main reasons we’re currently economically fucked up, and if I start talking about how mafia culture keeps some areas literally backwards I could talk about it for three months.

There are still people who are killed for standing up against them. These days the most prominent personality is Roberto Saviano who is a writer who dared to put together a book documenting minutely the way camorra works and he’s been living under protection for years by this point. Like, they want him dead because he wrote a book. And I’m sorta sure that he was talking about leaving Italy and going to the US after years of sticking with it here because he can’t take it anymore but I don’t know if it was a taken decision or if it’s still debating it.

It wasn’t even thirty years ago that we had the stragi di mafia - in english it’d be something like the mafia slaughters, basically around the beginning of the nineties there were a number of bombs planted by the mafia targeting people who were trying to oppose it including judges Falcone and Borsellino, actually the anniversary of Falcone’s death is like... tomorrow. And they’ve killed people for way longer than that. Here is a list of only Cosa Nostra victims including the ones from the eighties/nineties. And people are still dying because of it. The slaughters I’m referring to are just the ones in the nineties which are enough of a number.

They also perpetuate a culture where if you testify against your mafia-employed relatives you’ll be shunned forever. There are women who testified against their families and couldn’t see their children anymore never mind that they weren’t automatically considered a relative anymore the moment they sided against the mafia. Some people have committed suicide after becoming witnesses also because our police force/justice system can be terribly non-supportive in this kind of situation so they got left on their own. Never mind that back in the day - it was the beginning of the nineties? - I recall at least a particular story of - I think, correct me if I remember wrong but I can’t remember the names for the life of me - where this guy testified against the local mafia when he either used to work for them or was forced to pay them the pizzo and in retaliation his six-year old (or five? Anyway he had a son younger than ten for sure) got kidnapped, killed and thrown into acid to dispose of the body. That happened in what, 1993? 1994? It’s pretty much yesterday. And now the camorra is doing the same - there’s a list here of camorra victims among which accidental passerbys that got killed because they were in the way which I can tell just by glancing is not complete. And I’m not even going into the 'ndrangheta. That is to say, here mafia still kills people and cripples our country.

Now, I get that it’s a word, but the point was: let’s say that instead of the Italians the Japanese came to the US first and the umbrella word for organized crime was yakuza rather than mafia and let’s say yakuza was still what it was originally in Japan while in the US it stopped being a big deal and people write yakuza!AU instead of mafia AU. Let’s say someone Japanese gets angry at that and goes like 'listen the yakuza is a real deal it does this this this and that and it’s a plague in our country so can you please at least look it up before writing your fanfic’, which is what had happened way back then when this whole mafia and fanfic thing blew up. A bunch of people told us to get over it because it’s just a word and if it’s a problem in Italy it’s not in the US so why should they care? Now, if we had been Japanese (or Chinese or Russian or Mexican) would they have said the same thing? Considering the general tumblr attitude I’m pretty sure they would have received either an apology or 'this is an important deal let’s keep that in mind’ with signal boost reblogs and stuff. 

It’s the fact that we should get over people not knowing that it’s still a real problem for us and that they can’t take five seconds to google it that is the problem imo. Especially when instead of mafia au you can just say mobsters au or tag it as organized crime and everyone is a lot happier, mostly because as the tag above explains romanticising the mafia is a good thing for them because it means they can act outside Italy with less stigma because everyone thinks that the mafia is dead or not relevant anymore, if I’m explaining myself. (And it’s active outside Italy - like, there was a mafia kill in Germany in 2007 where six people died (sorry the link is in Italian but there isn’t an English wiki page, if you look the city up you’ll find something probably) and it was because of the 'ndrangheta.

I’d really like to not get worked over it because it meant it was a thing of the past y'know, but the problem is that it isn’t and I’d rather spread some awareness in hope some of these writers look it up (because it’s a good thing that people know what mafia is since as stated they have tendrils everywhere - if you read Saviano’s book the entire first chapter is about how camorra regularly deals with Chinese import/export in Italy for one) than shrug and figure that since they’ll think everything is good for fanfic then it’s not even worth my time.*

Now, ^^^ that was the c/p-ed reply that should answer most of your doubts. What I didn’t address was:

im sure many ppl romanticize it and i obvs dont agree with that but im just trying to udnerstand bc i believe fandoms are a way to explore things that we normally wouldnt.

aaaand as we say here in Italy, this is where the donkey falls (sorry we have weird sayings), because in theory there’s nothing wrong with that... except that in 99% of the mafia aus I’ve seen around the thing is that they’re supposed to be cute.

like, I see a lot of shit with TINY MAFIA BOSS STEVE ROGERS with RUSSIAN ENFORCER BUCKY (????? bucky isn’t even russian???) and the yoi thing I saw before had the japanese character being the leader of a russian mafia gang which is... like... guys it doesn’t happen it really doesn’t, and a lot of them re-use wrongly terminology taken from the godfather without context or knowing what the hell it means, and it’s always from the criminals’ pov and they’re somehow seen as criminals doing justice where the police can’t (???) and like... no. mafia bosses/enforcers/employees are bad people period, and at least here if you try to leave or repent they kill your family in retribution. like, not even ten years ago there’s been a woman who used to belong to a mafia family (or one colluded with the mafia) who testified and her entire town/family shunned her and she couldn’t take it anymore and... killed herself drinking acid if I don’t recall wrong. it’s not even special cases. this shit is not funny, it’s not cute, it’s not adorable and it’s not good fodder for your imagine your otp scenario (srsly I saw one like.. let me find it,

LIKE. just look at this shit. in a regular context, the enforcer goes to the show owner to force them to pay a monthly sum to their boss lest they destroy their shop and their lives and their family’s life never mind that mafia culture is deeply homophobic so the mafia enforcer flirting with the shopkeeper is like completely fucking out of the question. I mean, people here like to shit on the sopranos but that show was actually excellent representation of Horrid Criminals Who Were Never Supposed To Be Good People and the small arc that happened when one of tony’s friends turned out to be gay (closeted) was REALLY well done. btw, it ended that when they found out he was gay most of the crowd rejected him and thought badly of him until I think they killed him also for other reasons, but that spiraled from finding out he liked dick. and that’s american mafia that they actually based on well-done research of the culture in Italy it came from, I assure you that here it doesn’t work that differently. like. the shit above is so inaccurate and frankly offensive, it’s like... I get people romanticizing problematic stuff but the thing is that when you tell them that it’s actually offensive you get brushed off as ‘ah well you’re being too sensitive it’s just a word u__u’. now, I’m all for exploring shit we wouldn’t be into, but not like THAT, because that’s like mafia romantic comedy and that’s not how it works. now, you wanna do a fic where the mafia characters are deeply flawed and bad people and the police tries to catch them? fine, great, go ahead. you wanna do a fic where the enforcer above deals with dunno an entire life of internalized homophobia when he finds the shopkeeper attractive and feels conflicted over having to con money out of him and doing horrible shit for a living and maybe understanding that crime isn’t worth it and then he actually collaborates with the police and gets shit from about everyone he knows and loves for that? okay, awesome, go ahead. nothing bad in that.

but the shit above is not exploring things we wouldn’t/writing darkfic, it’s THINKING THAT A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION WHICH IS STILL A THING IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD IS CUTE AND ADORABLE. and that only plays in their favor because it takes the bad aura out of the word and we really should not let that happen. like. that is what is bad about mafia aus and mafia discourse, that people don’t realize the mafia is alive and well and thriving and not a thing that doesn’t exist or a generic word for organized crime.

you wanna write the shit above? okay, CALL IT CRIME AU or mob au, not mafia au.

btw, add-on: idk if I mentioned it in the above post or not, but in case I didn’t, I said that people would balk at the idea of a mexican cartel au. sadly since then I’ve found out a fandom where not only there is one but it’s also extra cutesy and people apparently love it and it has a bunch of kudos/comments and idek I’m not even touching that with a ten foot pole but like... I’ve avoided it and everything that author wrote because to me it’s just... nope. like, nope. if you do mafia aus don’t make them fucking cute. (also: in the same fandom I had to mute a v. famous fanartist whose art I actually liked but did cutesy mafia aus and.. like... haahahhaahahahahaha nah sorry. can’t go there. nope.)