Oh No

 I'm not posting as much anywhere anymore - I think in part because by the time I'm done actually backreading to a reasonable standard on all the social media I'm split across now, I'm kind of done for the day.

But I'm also not posting as much because, you know?  I've been at this making-things-to-share-on-the-internet lark for like 15 years now and I STILL have no idea how to properly foster any sort of engagement.  I think about a third of the people who viewed my last instagram poll actually bothered tapping on one of the two possible answers.  I've never been able to crack the secret of how to get anyone to actually reblog art.  90% of the comment notifications I get on AO3 are for posts written by other people that I did illustrations for in a bang.  Any time I've tried to throw a fun new idea I'm excited about out there hoping other people will get on board and it'll become A Thing, it's met by crickets and weird looks.  Anybody else does it, everybody's like YEAH THIS IS GREAT I'M INTO THIS IDEA EVERYBODY MAKE IT A THING.  Like, in virtually every walk of my life I'm just.  I don't know how to make people know the things I think are good are... good.

Maybe everything I say and do is just... terrible?  How do I know?

Anyway, that's why I'm sharing less.

 !!! With rumours circulating about Avengers: Edamame, I realise what I should REALLY work on RIGHT THE HELL NOW is my thundersmash story just in case the damn Avengers movie COMPLETELY TORPEDOES MY SUPERIOR IDEAS WITH ITS DUMB CANON

and yes, I KNOW I can blithely ignore canon to my heart's content, sometimes it's just really HARD to.  Like, what if they do something else that's also an idea I wouldn't mind exploring?  Welp, now I can't, because I wrote this other thing, and unlike any of Marvel anywhere ever, I'm actually a big ol' stickler for continuity in my fics, because my brain finds it soothing to know you can pick up any of my stories and they'll all in some way connect to each other, rather than a tangled mess of canon-divergences with almost but not quite all canon in common, tangled together on my ao3 page like 15 sets of earbuds that have been unceremoniously shoved to the back of somebody's desk drawer.

Also I just really love Thor and Hulk and Bruce and there's not enough of those dorks - and especially not enough of Gentle Hulk Snuggle Times With Nice Thor, and I like Hulk, and I like the idea that he stays shirtless most of the time because he has a positive body image and not because he hasn't figured out how to get custom-tailored shirts from the big n tall store, and I like his unique speech pattern and the things he likes to do and the fact that he could punch an armoured van into a crumpled heap with the effort it takes a schmoe like me to collapse a soda can, but he's also gentle enough to play with newborn bunnies and he likes video games and has a specially-adapted phone to accommodate his big ol' hands for texting and also he drinks herbal tea and loves fresh tropical fruit.

And he is the CHAMPION of spooning.

 

On a Quiet Morning in the Last Forest in Brooklyn

a Stucky AU Bang tale

words: whatthefoucault

pictures: velvetjinx

rating: M

relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers; Clint Barton/Kate Bishop; En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki; Doreen Green/Sam Wilson; Bruce Banner/Thor

characters: Steve Rogers; James “Bucky” Barnes; Tony Stark; Kate Bishop; Clint Barton; Wade Wilson; Rebecca Barnes Proctor; Original Male Character(s); Coach Wilson (Spider-Man: Homecoming); Original Female Character(s); Loki (Marvel); En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster; Thor (Marvel); Shuri (Marvel); Doreen Green; Nancy Whitehead; Sam Wilson (Marvel); Redwing (Marvel); Scott Lang; Wanda Maximoff; Natasha Romanov (Marvel); Minor Characters; Bruce Banner

tags: Weddings; New York City; Cooking; Food; Barnes Family; Therapy; Shopping; Becca Barnes is Badass; Sleepy Cuddles; Mild Sexual Content; Brooklyn; Science; College; Sam Wilson Can Talk to Birds; Genderfluid Loki (Marvel);Genderfluid En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster; Smoking; Public Transportation; Shamelessly Mashing MCU Characters With Comic Characters And Letting Them All Be Friends

summary:

“We said we wanted to keep the guest list short,” protested Steve. “Just close family, and close friends. Nothing expensive, nothing… tacky.”

“As if you’re one to complain about tacky,” countered Tony. “I got my invitation by group text. Who does that?”

…in which Bucky and Steve get married.

featuring illustrations by the illustrious velvetjinx and a lot of New York

Yesterday I commented on a post from a quite popular instagram and that comment now has like 500 likes and I no longer know what to do with that level of attention

You know what? Fuck it. Fuck writing things you think have "relatability" and "popular tropes" and "things that will be interesting to anybody but you," THIS IS THE YEAR I'm actually just gonna do what I goddamn well want and write the story of the Barnes family Passover seder, in which Original Characters play a large role talking about Boring Grown-Up things like the kids getting into an argument in the kitchen about the state of Mom's general health and independence and how would you know what's in Mom's best interest if you only fly out from Sacramento once a year at most, Allen, while Steve stands uncomfortably in the kitchen doorway holding the carefully-clingfilmed dish of charoset he brought from home.

I'm going to write about Loki going over stacks of retirement home pamphlets and writing lists of pros and cons as he sorts and re-sorts through the Maybe Pile before settling on the right place to house his dad, where the food is good and the activity schedule is comprehensive.

I'm going to write about Bucky's nonogenarian sister visiting her friend Minnie for afternoon tea and being introduced to Minnie's nice new friend who claims to be the king of Asgard, and Becca's pretty sure he's misremembering his personal history but knows it's in his best interest to humour him anyway.

I'm going to write about how Bucky and Loki became friends because they have adjacent appointments with the same therapist, and they bond over their horribly fucked up histories and boring adulting stuff and they like each other and their friends don't really understand why but they just do and it's nice.

I'm going to finish that damn Steve and Deadpool roadtrip.

It was raining when their grueling, fifteen-hour transatlantic journey finally touched down, and it rained steadily for their drive across the island. According to the latest weather forecast, they had a solid wall of rain to look forward to at least until they packed up and flew home again the following week.

- Light Showers and a Gentle Breeze, a Captain America Secret Santa gift for the illustrious velvetjinx