Oh No

whatthefoucault @ 2019-04-19T23:57:00

2019-04-19T23:05:37Z

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.

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whatthefoucault @ 2019-03-14T09:35:00

2019-03-14T09:39:34Z

Sooooooooo

I haven't done anything with patreon yet, despite having a patreon page for, what, like a month or two now? I think I'm afraid of having such a visible (tiny, possibly one-person) audience paying me upfront for exclusive content is going to mean I'm - consciously or unconsciously - trying to tailor my work to suit what I think they'll like rather than what I feel like doing. It's kind of... paralysing.

On the other hand, I'm like a third of the way done the LAST PAGE OF MY BOOK? It's only taken months to get here. That's fine, right? Just need to get pen on top of pencil and all the background details of their little enchanted kitchen and off it goes to the printers! Maybe someone will buy one! Or maybe I'll have a big cardboard box full of graphic novel cookbooks to give as Christmas gifts for the rest of my life?

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whatthefoucault @ 2019-02-25T14:45:00

2019-02-25T14:54:19Z

!!! 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.

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whatthefoucault @ 2019-02-25T10:27:00

2019-02-25T10:30:15Z

I need to throw myself directly back into creating more stuff so I don't have brain-space to feel bad that I for nebulous reasons I don't understand struggle to drag readership to my fics and I don't know how to change this.

wtf am I going to work on writing next? Do I attempt another thing for a bang-type event or say fuck it, I'm going to work on one of the many niche things I've been backburnering because they don't fit any bangs' remits well enough, or I don't think they'd make the minimum word count because I'm concise like that? Do I ban myself from seeing my AO3 stats page???

*sobbing*

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Fic: On a Quiet Morning in the Last Forest in Brooklyn

2019-02-18T21:40:54Z

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

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whatthefoucault @ 2019-02-11T11:41:00

2019-02-11T11:45:45Z

so i've discovered stardew valley

and on the one hand it makes me want to quit my job and go start a farm on the outskirts of an idyllic town

but on the other hand, hayfever???

!!! ALSO!

i didn't realise you could romance townspeople? but in my solo playthrough i just created myself but in dungarees. since davey and i have a multiplayer farm we do together, i'm working toward crafting the bits i need to marry him on that farm, but on Plop Farm, Farmer Sami Is Cool is just going to have to tell all the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes that i have a spouse who's just soooooo busy farming he never comes to visit/forage/rifle through people's garbage for field snacks and broken glasses.

and i'll need to create another save with a new character who isn't me who can marry, uhh, probably Leah or Shane tbh, the gayest farm frens

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whatthefoucault @ 2019-02-06T15:45:00

2019-02-06T15:46:32Z

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

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whatthefoucault @ 2019-01-21T13:48:00

2019-01-21T15:01:11Z

Dreamwidth is intimidating because it feels like it's accompanied by this notion that I need to talk about myself here and use Actual Words to do so and I don't. Like that. I just want to post my paintings and point people in the direction of my fic.

I didn't spend the best years of my life wading boobs-deep in literary theory to, I dunno, have to apply that erudition to everyday life? What even is my everyday life? It's me having a panic flap and almost buying 23 litres of Oatly Barista Edition oat drink on ocado because there's none in stock at my local Waitrose and I NEED IT. It's discovering that the big name-brand okonomiyaki sauce has shiitake mushroom in it and I'll have to make my own mushroom-free sauce at home if I want my face not to swell up and go numb if I eat it on my scrummy big cabbage pancake. It's generally having extremely wavering confidence in my creative output, but I'm told that it's bad form to talk about these things publicly because it makes people uncomfortable and speaking in self-deprecating terms casts doubt on people's genuine assessments of your shit. It's worrying about starting up my patreon page because I don't know what content to offer, then worryring about promoting my patreon page because what if I DO get just enough subscribers to recognise each of them individually and feel like I need to be creating exclusive works that will specifically appeal to them, instead of what I feel like I'd like to be making. It's family shit that's too personal to talk about here.

It's seeing whether or not my joints and digestive system benefit from taking a giant-ass scoop of collagen powder in my evening hot oat milk.

(Regardless, it's delicious)

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whatthefoucault @ 2018-12-29T21:27:00

2018-12-29T22:08:22Z

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.

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The trouble with having rejection sensitivity dysphoria and a crap memory

2018-12-25T20:41:04Z

Is you regularly forget that rejection sensitivity dysphoria is a thing and you have it.

THAT’S why waking up to a twitter notification that a dozen people you’re friends with have liked somebody else’s art makes my heart hurt, or why I can’t just FOLLOW PEOPLE on a new social medium because it will hurt if they don’t want to follow me back. That’s probably part of why people branching out from tumblr feels extra hard for me, and in the midst of what was a really exciting creative surge I just feel utterly... I don’t know what I feel. “Just keep creating; it shouldn’t matter how many other people like it” just makes me feel like my feelings are wrong if I get sad when something I spent weeks working on dies with 25 impressions and a like. I can’t switch that off, unless there’s a strategy for embracing your own mediocrity and letting go of your ambitions that actually works with my fun list of neurodivergences :)

*hurls self into the sun*

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whatthefoucault @ 2018-12-19T13:11:00

2018-12-19T13:13:23Z

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

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whatthefoucault @ 2018-12-10T11:36:00

2018-12-10T11:37:36Z

*insert a picture of a dog wearing a safety-yellow vest with NERVOUS printed on it in big letters here*

I don't understand what I'm doing or how to do it. Where are my friends? Help

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