#actually this is twitter brain mj right now

[2qts]

Literally going to fight my brain for saying world too scary for go pee at night? Who decides this way?? Government? God? No.

#my post #upset. #also too tired for brain >:( #actually this is twitter brain mj right now #Id post this on twitter #but im not doing that because I was already on this social media and also its safer here #warmer. calmer.

[css1992]

Guilty Pleasure

[Porn AU]

Summary: Peter and Beck used to be a power couple in the porn industry, but after Beck dumps him, Peter is forced to start over. With no money, no family and nowhere to go, he doesn’t have much choice other than to keep doing porn, so he joins Just4Fans to get back on his feet and then one day he gets a very generous tip from someone under the username of YKWIM.

All the warnings listed on Part I apply.

Read on AO3

Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V / Part VI / Part VII / Part VIII / Part IX / Part X /  Part XI / Epilogue

-x-

The last couple of weeks of May flew by, soon June arrived and with it even more sunny days and warmer temperatures. Peter couldn’t help but think that his life fell apart in the winter, and as summer approached, it was slowly getting back on track. He was able to save a decent amount of money every month, his apartment was coming together – he even had a dinner table and chairs by the second week of June –, he was taking on more responsibility at BFF way quicker than expected and he was happier, in general.

He felt comfortable enough to make plans again – with the steady money he was making, he might be able to give up porn in a couple of years and he would still be eligible to apply for some of BFF’s grants and scholarships, meaning he may be able to go to college at 23, after all. Money would be tight for a while, but it was doable. He could always work part-time to supplement his income as well.

Summer also brought some unexpected good news. On a random Thursday morning, he was bombarded with messages on Twitter and Instagram from people asking where they could find his videos now that Beck’s channel was down. He was confused at first, but when he went to check, the channel wasn’t there, it had disappeared from the site.

He gasped. For a total of five seconds, his mind went wild, his heart raced, and his eyes watered. For those five seconds, he felt a mixture of happiness, relief and confusion, knowing those videos weren’t out there anymore, couldn’t be found, couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be remembered. But it was only for five blissful seconds. When his brain turned back on and the first rush of excitement died down, he realized that probably wouldn’t last.

That had happened before, when they first started posting. People mass reported the videos and the channel until they got taken down, because Peter looked very young at eighteen. They had to send a picture of his ID to the website for check several times, it was months before it stopped happening once and for all. Peter assumed Beck was posting videos of his new boyfriend, who he knew looked very young, so it was probably just a misunderstanding and only a matter of time until he got the channel – and the videos – back up.

Still, he allowed himself to count that as a win and couldn’t help but feeling giddy all day, to the point where everybody noticed his good mood – Ned, MJ, people at BFF and Tony.

Tony, who didn’t disappear. As days and nights and weeks went by, Peter stopped waiting for it to happen.

“Someone is awfully cheery today.” The older man grinned at him from the driver’s side that night, as Peter sang along to Ed Sheeran, because it was his turn to choose the playlist. Tony had picked him up from BFF and they were heading to his place for a quiet night in.

“It’s a good day, Tony.” He shot back after the chorus of Put it All on Me and the older man beamed, the corners of his eyes crinkling up.

“It sure is, kitten.” He turned up the volume and Peter sang even louder, causing Tony to burst out laughing.

At some point, he realized life was a little less complicated than he gave it credit for. He realized that if he actually gave things the precise amount of thought they deserved, not everything felt like the end of the world. The minute he decided to just let things happen the way they were supposed to happen, without overthinking every detail, life got so much easier.

He decided not to make the thing with Tony a big deal. Sure, when he thought about it for more than two minutes, it seemed like a huge fucking deal, he was basically dating Tony Stark, one of the richest men in the world, Iron Man himself, the man who had literately saved half the universe from extinction not even two years earlier. So, yes, that seemed like a big fucking deal, but–

But.

To him, he was just Tony. This charming guy who texted him daily to ask about his day and crack acid jokes about his business associates. This kind guy who sent him chocolates when he was feeling down and cooked him dinner every weekend and made sure to e-mail him easy and healthy recipes so he wouldn’t starve to death. This gentle guy who called him beautiful and touched him with such care that he forgot how many hands had left bruises on his skin before.

When he forgot everything Tony was supposed to be and just focused on everything that he was to him, what they had seemed so simple and pure.

He stopped worrying about labels, too. In the beginning, he kept stressing about what they had, what was expected of him, what he expected of Tony, but eventually, he decided none of that mattered. They made each other feel good, they made each other happy, they made each other better, all in all, whatever label he could put on their relationship wouldn’t make any difference, so he let it go.

Weeks later, Peter heard Beck had managed to get the channel back up, only for it to get taken down again in a few hours, then his Instagram and Twitter also disappeared. He wasn’t too surprised, and if he was honest with himself, it was fun imagining Beck losing his mind as he tried to fix it. After all, every day the channel was down, he was losing money. And his social media, specially his Twitter account, was where he promoted his content to thousands of followers, so losing that meant losing money as well, and if there was one thing Peter knew Beck loved, it was money.

He wondered what the fuck the man had done to piss people off like that, it was clearly a coordinated attack, but he wasn’t curious enough to try and find out what happened. He would rather watch from a distance, rejoicing in the satisfaction it gave him to imagine that maybe, just maybe, one of those days Beck wouldn’t be able to get the channel back up and would have to start from scratch, like Peter did. And maybe then he wouldn’t re-upload his videos – that part was a little harder to believe, but who knew, stranger things had happened.

When June came to an end, Peter was surprised with a notification from Tony on Just4Fans. He had almost forgot the man was still subscribed to his account there, they obviously never chatted on the app anymore, and when he opened the notification, his blood ran cold in his veins.

It was a tip.

A hundred thousand dollars tip.

He couldn’t fucking believe it. A tip? For what, a job well done? It wasn’t like Peter was – what did that even mean? Was Tony trying to say something with that, send some kind of message?

He decided not to call him right away, he was too – upset. The older man was picking him up later that evening for dinner, so he decided to wait. Whatever he had to say to him, he wanted to hear it in person. He wanted him to look in his eyes and tell him he thought he was his fucking wh–

“What is the meaning of this?” He asked as soon he got in his car, avoiding the kiss that came his way. Tony blinked in surprise, trying to understand why he got a phone shoved in his face instead of a kiss, and then he finally saw what that was all about.

“Oh, that–“ But before he could answer anything, Peter interrupted.

“I told you I’m not – Tony, why would you – this is so insulting!” He was honestly at a loss for words. They had been seeing each other for almost two months by then, things were going great, they met every week, they made apple pie together, for God’s sake, had he misunderstood all the signs?

“My God, Peter, that’s not that, I just thought – I mean, I’m a billionaire, you know this is pocket change for me, right?” Peter gasped, shocked, and Tony’s eyes widened when he fumbled with the door handle. “Wait! I didn’t mean – Jesus, okay, hold on a second, please!” Tony reached over him to shut the door before Peter could get out of the car. The young man turned to look at him with tears in his eyes and Tony looked incredulous when he leaned back and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t just assume the worst, have I given you any reason for that?” He sounded hurt, which made Peter gulp. He took a few calming breaths and shook his head slowly.

“No,” he whispered, dropping his gaze.

“Ok, good.” He actually sounded relieved at that. “I am a billionaire, Peter, and this is pocket change for me, which means –“ he raised his voice a little, predicting a reaction from him that didn’t come, “I didn’t realize this would be such a big deal. For me, it’s like giving you, I don’t know, flowers. I didn’t mean this as a payment for whatever you think this is, I just thought this would be a good help. You’re starting your life now, you have that list of yours that you don’t let me see, you’re saving up money, you have your plans for college, I just meant to help. I mean, if we weren’t together, I would have tipped you every month, so I thought –“

“But we are together, Tony, I –“ he was a little calmer then, because that was, in fact, a reasonable explanation and he shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. “Look, I appreciate the gesture, but next time you mean to give me flowers, just give me flowers! I believe you have the best intentions at heart, but it’s just weird for me. I don’t want this to be about money. I just – don’t want that, okay?”

He gazed at the older man as he gaped at him, mouth opening and closing, but no sound came out for a while.

“I just thought – I mean, people usually –“ It was unusual to see Tony speechless like that, but the man shook his head and looked back at him, almost embarrassed. “I just want to help you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Peter poked him in the arm, trying to lighten up the mood in the car. “You’re teaching me how to cook. Yesterday I made an omelet and I only burned one side, I’m getting good at this. That’s a big help.”

Tony didn’t laugh at his joke, like he usually did, he just gazed at him with an unreadable expression, before leaning in to kiss him, which Peter gladly reciprocated.

“I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable,” he whispered, then, resting his forehead against his.

“And I’m sorry I was rude. It won’t happen again,” he promised, and he meant it.

After that night, he removed Tony from his Just4Fans, which came as a blow to the older man, who pouted and whined for about a week, only stopping when Peter showed up at his place one Saturday wearing Iron Man lingerie under his clothes – it was supposed to be a joke, but it worked surprisingly well for Tony.  

By July, it became impossible to keep sneaking around Ned and MJ, as the dates became more frequent. Peter decided to tell them that he had met someone online and that they were getting to know each other. He told them it was nothing serious yet and if it became serious, they would meet him.

He did have to throw in a few lies to get them off his back – he definitely had to lie about Tony’s age to avoid certain comparisons, but he would cross that bridge when he got to it, if he ever got to it. He wasn’t sure if or when he was going to tell them the whole truth, but for the time being, he  felt more comfortable keeping that relationship to himself.

He and Tony didn’t go out much, but when they did, it was always to fancy and discreet restaurants with private rooms; Tony was, after all, a celebrity for all intents and purposes, and at if the press got a whiff of them there would be no secret left to keep.

But staying in with Tony was far from boring. They cooked together and the older man taught him all of his grandmother’s secret recipes – Peter could never replicate them by himself at home, but it was still fun trying. They spent almost all of their time down in the workshop, though, where Tony  had him do menial tasks, like screwing bolts or reaching for a part inside an Iron Man suit. He said his tiny hands were useful for his projects.

He knew he wasn’t really that useful, but he loved when Tony included him and asked for his help, even though he didn’t really need it. He was fascinated by everything the older man taught him in those moments and in turn Tony always looked proud and pleased when Peter put his lessons to use.

He didn’t mind keeping him company when Tony was focused on projects he couldn’t help with, he stayed there anyway, reading a book or watching TV on the tiny couch – Tony kept saying he was going to get a bigger one, but he didn’t believe it, he knew the older man enjoyed the fact that the only way they could fit comfortably on it was if Peter was lying half on top of him.

So after several weeks, they established a little routine of their own. Since Tony had a busy schedule and Peter was still trying to keep Ned and MJ somewhat in the dark, they didn’t meet that often on week days, but they always talked on the phone before bed. On Thursdays, Tony picked him up after his shift at BFF and he spent the night at his place. They had breakfast together on Fridays and then they met again every Saturday after lunch, and finally Tony dropped him back off home every Sunday evening, so he could have dinner with his friends.

In August, for the first time in his life, Peter had two birthday celebrations. One with his friends, when the three of them went bar-hopping and he got home so hammered he had absolutely no idea how they managed to climb the stairs, and another with Tony, when he decorated the workshop with  balloons and put party hats on Dum-E and U.

“Surprise!” He yelled lamely, throwing confetti at Peter when they stepped into the workshop. The younger man laughed, delighted, as Tony hurried to the kitchenette and came back with something in his hands. “I know it doesn’t look good, but I promise it tastes good. Probably.” When Peter looked down, he noticed it was a large chocolate cake with ‘Happy Birthday, kitten’ written on it in bright pink icing. It looked so ugly, but it was so beautiful at the same time. “What did I do now?” Tony frowned, face falling.

He blinked a few times and when he touched his cheeks, he realized he was crying.

“I’m sorry, I’m just – really happy.” He grinned, pulling the older man’s face to give him a kiss. “Thank you.”

It was late October when Tony told him he had to go on a trip to China for two weeks, and even though it wasn’t his first work trip since they started dating, five months earlier, it would be by far the longest one since then, so it was kind of a big deal. Still, he didn’t expect to feel so affected, but on the days leading up to it he was so upset he couldn’t hide it.

They spent their last Sunday together wrapped up in each other doing absolutely nothing. They slept in, Tony brought Peter breakfast in bed, which was rewarded with a lazy and sloppy blow job, and they spent all day in bed, only getting up for essentials, like food and water. They didn’t even turn on the TV, they didn’t even talk much. They just held each other and exchanged slow, tender kisses until their bodies were too warm to stay under the sheets.

Tony ran a bath for them and got in the tub – it was big enough for eight people, but Peter made a point to sit in his lap, clinging to him like a koala. He felt Tony’s arms encircle him gently, as he rested his chin on top of his head.

“I’ll be home before you even have time to miss me, kitten.” He whispered, and those were the first words either of them had said in at least a few hours.

Peter didn’t tell him that was impossible since he already missed him, instead he just held him even tighter.

After the bath water went cold, they climbed out of the tub and Tony insisted on drying him, before dressing him in one of his own T-shirts, even though Peter had a multitude of spare clothes in his closet. He sat in bed, watching Tony pack a huge suitcase that reminded him just how long he would be gone for. He sulked a little – just a little – and that earned him a little kiss on his forehead, which was enough to undo the frown between his brows.

Finally, in the evening, Tony parked his car in front of Peter’s building, turning to look at him with an almost pained smile, before leaning in for a kiss.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Peter whispered against his mouth and felt when Tony’s lips stretched into a small smile. He pulled away a little, just enough to look into his eyes, and cupped his chin in his hand.

“I’ll miss you too, but I won’t be long, ok? It’s just a few days.” He pecked Peter’s lips one more time for good measure and the younger man nodded.

“Call me if you have time.”

“Of course, kitten, every day.” He leaned in for another kiss, this one longer than the previous, and Peter’s heart fluttered. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out, containing the urge to say those three words that had been trapped in the back of his throat for weeks.

“Have a safe trip. Let me know when you land.”

“I will, baby.”

Peter got out of the car and waved, watching as it disappeared down the street. He sighed and his heart ached, he already missed Tony and it had only been a few seconds, how was he going to survive fifteen whole days? It seemed impossible. It was crazy to think how far they had come since March, when they talked for the first time. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

He turned to go inside, but froze in place when he heard a familiar voice.

“So that’s why you’ve been ignoring me, huh? How rude.” He turned slowly to the left, only to be met with Beck’s cocky, arrogant smile, just a few feet away from him. “I tried calling, I tried texting, you’ve blocked me everywhere, I can’t even e-mail you anymore, it appears.” Beck walked slowly and leaned against the rails of the stairs to Peter’s building and the younger man curled his hands in fists, trying to control the urge to just run. “Long time no see, Petey-pie.”

He was paralyzed, muscles rigid, but to his own surprise, it wasn’t fear that he felt, or sadness. It was pure anger.  

“I wonder why,” he answered quietly, but firmly. Beck’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline, before the smile was back in place. “How did you find me?” He demanded, because Beck had never cared to ask where Peter was going to stay after he kicked him out, so how in the hell would he know where to find him?

“Wasn’t easy, I have been following you on Instagram, some of your morning run routes seemed familiar, so I–”

“You stalked me?” He frowned, taking a step closer to the other man, who looked at Peter with indignation and hurt. He shook his head, softened those baby blue eyes and placed one hand over his chest, right above where his heart would have been if he had one.

“I just wanted to see you, is all.” He shrugged, dropping his gaze to stare at his own feet, and Peter wanted to roll his eyes. It was so weird watching his whole act now that the spell had been lifted.

“What do you want?” He asked, making the older man’s head snap back up, a little surprised by his cold tone.

“I just told you, I wanted to see you. I missed you.” He took a few steps towards Peter, who in turn walked backwards to keep his distance

“You missed me?” He scoffed, shaking his head. “Where’s your new boy-toy, you put him away so you could come play with me?” He cocked his head to the side and, for a moment, he could see the shock crossing his features.

“Pete… Why are you acting like this, it’s like I don’t even know you anymore...” His voice broke and he looked away, pretending to wipe away a tear. He wondered how the hell he used to fall for that.

“You don’t, Quentin. I’m not a lost little boy anymore, you should go back to your boyfriend. Or is he smarter than me and dumped you already? Is that what this is all about?” He narrowed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest, and Beck’s mouth hung open like he couldn’t believe his words.

“I made a mistake, Pete. After so many years, I took you for granted, I couldn’t see what I saw the first time I met you. I couldn’t see how beautiful you were, how caring and loving you were, how loyal and reliable and – I don’t know, I was blind. I was so stupid, I shouldn’t have left you.” His eyes were wide, earnest, shining with unshed tears. His face was open, even his body language screamed honesty. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so bad about falling for his act – Beck was good. “Don’t  you miss me, baby? Don’t you miss us?”

Peter snorted, shaking his head, he couldn’t believe the nerve of that man.

“You made a mistake, huh? So you dumped your new boy, right? If I were to go home with you right now, he wouldn’t be there, waiting for you, like a fucking plan B, in case this doesn’t go your way. Right?” It was his turn to take a few steps towards the older man. “Like I was your plan B while you waited for him to turn 18?”

“Peter, c’mon–“

“Is he there, Beck? Just answer me that. Come on, if he’s not, I’ll take you back right now, we can go home together.” He insisted, looking into the older man’s eyes, but he didn’t say anything, he just sighed. “Of course he is. If I said yes, what would you do? Tell him to pack his things in the middle of the night and leave? Would you keep all the money he’s made you and tell him to fuck off? Would you leave him broke and lonely and fucking lost in this world? Would you tell him that he wasn’t good enough and dispose of him like he’s fucking garbage?” His voice grew louder and louder, and when he came to himself, he noticed he was in Beck’s face, their chests almost touching, so he took a step back. “So to answer your question, Quentin, no, I don’t fucking miss you. You fucking ruined me!”

“I saved you!” And just like that, the good guy act was gone. His whole demeanor changed, the soft baby blues widened, his mouth was set in a sneer, he puffed out his chest to intimidate him, but Peter stood his ground. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember who you were before me. You were a fucking loser! An orphan, no family, no friends, no future! I took you in, I took care of you, I gave you a profession – don’t fucking roll your eyes, what the fuck are you doing now, huh? Rocket science? ‘Cause it seems to me like you’re still doing porn, and now you’re clearly branching out into prostitution, would you look at that!”

“You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about!” He placed his hands on the man’s chest and pushed him away when he got too fucking close for comfort. He held his breath when he realized what he had done, afraid of the man’s reaction, but he just kept his distance.  

“You know what? Fuck you, Peter. I was wrong about you, I thought I knew who you were, I thought I missed you, but you’re just a disgusting fucking whore, after all. You’re a dirty little bitch in heat who likes to get this loose hole of yours fucked by old perverts, I don’t know why I’m surprised, I mean, that’s why I dumped you, you were enjoying those videos a little bit too much for my taste. You weren’t even satisfied with two cocks up your ass, one in your mouth and a line of men waiting to fuck you. You disgust me.” He started walking away, and Peter wanted to say something, he wanted to yell at him and defend himself, he wanted to tell him he didn’t fucking enjoy it, he wanted to tell him that it was all his fault, he threw him to the lions, he let those men fucking–

Fuck!

He rushed inside the building and ran upstairs, eyes clouded with tears. He tripped and fell knees first on the steps, but he didn’t even feel pain, he just got up and kept going, kept running, trying to put as much distance between him and Beck as he could, even though it was irrational. Beck was gone, he walked away, he left him, he left him again, he wasn’t coming back–

“Ned?!” He knocked urgently on his friends’ door. He didn’t have his spare key, it was upstairs in his own apartment, but he couldn’t trust himself to go all the way up there and down again without having a full on panic attack. “MJ?! Are you guys home?!” He was really trying not to sound too desperate, he didn’t want to scare them, but it was hard controlling his emotions when his heart was hammering against his chest and he couldn’t fucking breathe.

“Peter?” It was MJ who yanked the door open. She had a towel wrapped around her torso, her hair was wet, and Peter felt guilty, but she took one look at him and quickly pulled him into a hug. “My God, Peter...” She whispered into his hair when he started sobbing uncontrollably on her naked shoulder. “Come on in, c’mon.” He heard the door closing behind him, but he didn’t let go of her, he felt like if he did, he wouldn’t be able to hold himself together.  

He wanted to tell her not to worry, that she should go finish her shower and change, but he really, really needed her right then. She sat down on the couch, pulling him with her and he promptly laid down, burying his face in her legs. He couldn’t stop crying and sobbing and no matter how many times she asked him what was wrong, sounding increasingly more worried, he couldn’t get his feelings under control enough to give her any answer.

He was there for what felt like hours, when at some point someone lifted him from MJ’s lap and enveloped him in such a tight hug he couldn’t breath for a second, but he sighed in relief, it was right what he needed. Ned’s arms felt like home, it calmed him down almost instantly – his voice whispering that it was fine, everything was going to be okay helped a lot, too.

“I hate him, I hate him so fucking much,” he mumbled into his shoulder, God knew how much time later, and his friend just hummed, patting his back. “I hate that he made a mess of me and I let him.” He couldn’t hold back more tears when he said that, because it was true, it was so fucking true. He let Beck do whatever he wanted to him, he let him ruin his dreams, his future, his fucking personality, until he was nothing but a shell of what he used to be.

“I know, Peter, I know,” Ned soothed him, rubbing his back, even though he probably had no idea what he was talking about. “It’s okay now. You’re okay. It’s over”

“I made tea.” MJ’s quiet voice sounded somewhere from his right and when he turned to look at her, she was already dressed, wet hair up in a bun, with a mug in her hands, which she extended to him. He accepted it but didn’t dare to take a sip, he was positive that if he did, he would throw up, his stomach was all kinds of fucked up at that moment. “Peter, what happened? Did Star – uh, did your boyfriend do something? Did he hurt? ‘Cause I swear to God–” Just the mention of Tony being the cause of his distress made him sick, so he cut her off.

“Beck was here.” He sniffed, looking at the mug to avoid their eyes when he heard both of them gasping.

“Beck? Beck was here? Fucking Beck?” MJ screeched and he nodded.

“He was waiting for me outside.” He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to gather enough energy to have that conversation.  

“What did he want?” Ned asked calmly, while MJ paced the floor, furious.

“I don’t know...” He shrugged, wrecking his brain to try and figure out what his motive was. “His channel got taken down a few weeks ago and he couldn’t get it back up. I heard he had to start over.” He hadn’t been watching that closely, but he knew something was wrong, even his Twitter and Instagram accounts kept getting taken down almost monthly, it was impossible he was making any money over the past few months. “He said he wanted to get back together, probably because he thinks us making up would be a big hit or whatever. I said no, of course. He didn’t like the answer.”

“Did he hurt you?!” MJ strode back to him until she was standing right in front of him, looking into his eyes. He was almost intimidated by her.

“No, he just… Said some pretty shitty things, is all,” he answered sheepishly, because he hated that that man could still make a mess of him with just a few hurtful words.

“Oh, dude. He’s just mad he’s lost control over you. Whatever he said, he just wanted to hurt you, it doesn’t mean anything.” Ned placed an arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer, and Peter rested his head against his, sighing.

“I know. He was always like that, you know,” he whispered, as flashes of memories crossed his mind. “When I didn’t bend to his wishes, when I didn’t do things his way, he fucking–“ He squeezed his eyes shut, furious, because he had fallen for that again. “He tries to charm me and when it doesn’t work, he attacks me. But the thing is, he really knows what to say to destroy me. It just sucks. But it’s fine. I just need a moment, I’ll be fine.” He sat up straight and looked both of his friends in the eyes.

“Yes, you will. You most certainly will.” Ned patted his shoulder one last time, getting up from the couch. “Why don’t you lie down for a second, huh? I’m making dinner, I’ll even try one of those recipes your mystery boyfriend taught you.” Just the mention of Tony made him breathe a little easier, even though he wouldn’t be able to see him for a while.

“Okay.” He nodded, smiling softly. MJ took Ned’s place on the couch and he lay down, placing his head on her legs, as she ran her fingers through his hair. He sighed contently and closed his eyes, feeling exhausted. He was close to drifting off when he heard Ned gasp.

“Oh my God,” He breathed quietly from the kitchen and both Peter and MJ looked at him curiously from over the back of the couch.

“What?” She didn’t look too worried, but Peter was concerned about how pale he was.

“Ned, what’s wrong?” He frowned, watching Ned’s horrified expression looking at his phone like it was a murder scene. He raised his eyes and gulped.

“Peter is trending on Twitter,” he whispered, after a while.

“What?!” They both hurried over to the kitchen counter, and the first thing Peter saw when he looked at his phone was a picture of him and Tony in his car, kissing. As Ned scrolled down, more pictures showed up, but not only that, clips of his old videos were all over Twitter, people knew his full name, his real name, and they were making all sorts of comments. Iron Man, Tony Stark, Peter Parker, sex worker, prostitute and porn were trending.

The room was completely silent for a whole minute, before MJ turned on the TV.

“… appear that Tony Stark, former CEO of Stark Industries and retired Avenger, was seen kissing a young man in his car earlier this evening. The person in the pictures seems to be one Peter Parker, a twenty-one year old porn actor, who is also said to work as a prostitute…”

Peter’s heart sank to the bottom of his stomach, his vision blurred and he felt bile rising in his throat. He took a deep breath and got up from the couch, ears ringing, as he rushed to the front door.  He heard his friends yelling something, but he couldn’t make out their words, and he just couldn’t deal with all that right then and there.

“I, uhm, I gotta go,” he called from over his shoulder, slamming the door shut on his way out.

As he ran upstairs, vision blurred by tears and chest hurting, begging for oxygen, he couldn’t help but remember his life fell apart in the winter. And fall would be over soon.

-x-

So... It appears that someone has lost the ability to write short chapters... 

Anyways, only three more chapters to go!  🥳

Tag list (please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed from the list):  @sadachmesarthim @iamnotparticularlyproud @staticwhispersinthedark @bluestarker @ whyisthisathingcb

#starker #peter parker x tony stark

[spiderman-homecomeme]

day one - pull out pt. 1

ROAD TRIP AU

A/N: GUYS!!! Spideychelle Week is finally here!! We made it!!! hell yeah!!! I have been so excited to see what everyone’s been working on while also being very stressed trying to figure out what I’m working on, you know?? Anyway, I couldn’t wait to post this one. It’s the first part of two, the conclusion being with day 7. And i know, the title is a little suggestive, but the spicy stuff doesn’t come until the next part! 

Huge thanks to @spideychelleweek​ for setting this up!! 

okay!! hope you all enjoy some 2.7k of peter being a little shit, mj being an absolute saint, and some fluff mixed in!!

Read here or on AO3

-

“You almost ready?” MJ asks from the living room.

“Uh—” Peter runs both hands through his hair, mussing it up out of a mix of both frustration at himself and panic. He stares down at his now empty backpack, all of the contents he’d originally packed dumped unceremoniously onto the bed. “Yeah!” He shouts as he starts to stuff the wrinkled t-shirts and shorts back in haphazardly. 

“Are you sure?” 

He jumps at her voice suddenly entering his room. Spinning around, he smiles sheepishly. “Almost!”

MJ leans against the doorframe, her own duffle bag slung over her shoulder. “Need any help?”

Peter exhales sharply through his nose before scratching the back of his neck. He goes to one of his biggest decision-making problems, holding up two near-identical pairs of swim trunks, both blue, one a lighter shade, and one a darker shade. “Which one of these should I bring?”

MJ fixes him with a deadpan, unimpressed stare. “The light blue.”

Peter nods, almost resolute. “Yeah… Yeah… But I mean…” He sighs. “I do like the dark blue.”

“So bring the dark blue.”

“But you said the light blue.”

“Okay, then bring the light blue.”

Peter stays silent, his gaze flitting between the two similar pairs of shorts. 

“Bring both.” 

He looks up at her, letting out a nervous, embarrassed laugh. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. Good idea.”

MJ stares at a spot on the wall just above his head, and he assumes it’s because she’s silently asking whatever higher being is watching them right now for another ounce of patience. 

“Sorry,” Peter says after a beat, his hands wringing the last t-shirt he plans to pack. “I know I can be a pain in the ass, so… Thanks. For putting up with me, I guess?”

Her stony expression doesn’t last long, falling as she lets out a quiet huff of laughter. She turns back around, heading into the living room again, and although he can’t see her face, Peter swears he can hear the hint of a smile in her tone as she calls back to him, “You’re good!”

His stomach flips, and he feels himself falling deeper and deeper into the pit of catching feelings for his best friend. It’s dangerous territory, he knows, but it’s not as if he can help it. MJ’s just… so… 

So...

She’s so  MJ.  

And he just likes her  so. Much.  

She makes him laugh, both times when he needs it and times when he least expects it. 

She’s such a wildly cool person, he’s not even sure she’s real sometimes. 

And although she has this hard, deadpan exterior, he’s seen her when she’s at her mushiest and softest. 

And today, he’s seen her today, as they get ready for their three day long trip to Virginia beach.

MJ had so graciously agreed to wait for him to be done with class before they’d head out. Why she was so willing to put up with that, he had no idea. He didn’t get out of class until 4:20 PM, giving them not very much daylight for the seven-and-a-half hour drive ahead of them to Betty’s parent’s beach cottage down in Virginia. Now at this point, nearly 5:00 PM, they wouldn’t be getting in until a little after midnight, and that was at the earliest; if they took out bathroom breaks, speed limits, snack stops, etc. 

Part of him, a tiny, tiny part of him, wants to think she might have originally agreed to this because of the minute possibility that she could feel the same way about him that he felt about her. 

But then that part of him is crushed by the realization that perhaps she was doing it because she’s a good person and a good friend. 

Of course, there’s been moments where he’s been sure—absolutely sure—that she felt the same way. Eye contact that’s lasted a bit too long, said too much; touches that have lingered and burned when they shouldn’t. 

And again, the rational side of his brain bursts in like the Kool-Aid man, rubbing it in his face that he’s just imagining things, that all of that stuff he thinks he’s seeing is just himself getting his hopes up.

It’s thoughts like these—the good and the not so good—that make the idea of spending seven-ish hours alone in a car with her seem like a really, really,  really  bad idea. He’s not sure how he’s going to function the rest of the day, and honestly, the next three days. How he’s not going to say something stupid and get himself in deep shit, he has no idea. 

Right now, as they get into the car, MJ climbing into the driver’s seat, Peter in the passenger seat, he figures the best way to deal with this—his feelings for her, his dumbass brain, everything—is just to avoid, avoid,  avoid.

His main objective is to not spend any time alone with her outside of this drive.

He’s lost in thought, planning out the sleeping arrangements—Betty had said that she and her sister and two cousins always stayed at this house, so it had four sleeping spots—so much so that he barely registers the car engine roaring to life, doesn’t even notice MJ pulling-out of the parking lot and onto the highway. 

“Dude?” 

MJ’s voice, once again, yanks him out of his thoughts. 

“Uh… What—huh?” He sputters.

She passes a glance in his direction, the corner of her mouth twitching upward briefly. “You good?”

He seems to have forgotten how to speak for a moment, stammering incoherent sounds that are only vaguely human before he’s actually able to answer her. 

“What? Yeah!” He says perhaps a bit too dramatically. “I’m fine. You good?”

MJ’s eyes shift between him and the road in front of her. “Uh-huh.”

“Good!” A wide, borderline too-excited smile stretches across his face. “Great!”

Again, she glances at him. “I don’t know. I mean, you look kinda pale. You seem jumpy. You’re not gonna puke are you?” She lightly teases, though it’s evident that there’s some genuine concern there.

“What? No, no.” Peter shakes his head vehemently. “No. No no. No. I’m fine.”

“Okay, good,” MJ gives a single nod. “Because I don’t wanna have to make you pay to have my car detailed again.”

Peter lets out a nervous chuckle. “Yeah—Yeah. Me neither.”

Already, he feels as though he’s not doing so great. He’s too much in his head. But… he doesn’t want to risk saying something stupid…. And yet… staying silent only lets him listen to his thoughts even more, and then he just keeps thinking about this whole situation. 

He just needs to distract himself. 

For the first hour of the trip, he has a hard time coming up with anything that isn’t talking to her, or listening to the faint music on the stereo. He tries looking at his phone for a bit during hour-one, but that only proves to make him the teensiest bit carsick, the contents of his stomach lightly sloshing as he attempts to read through his Twitter feed. Then, he tries to sleep a bit, closing his eyes and letting the gentle hum of the drive help him to drift off. 

He tries pointing out every farm animal he sees in hour two, and that proves to help just a little, giving his brain something else to focus on while also keeping his eyes on the moving world outside so he doesn’t actually vomit. 

“Cow,” he says, approximately a million times as they drive through a small bit of countryside in Maryland, pointing at every single one he sees. “Cow. Ooo, horse! Wait—” He stops. “It’s a cow. False alarm.”

“Cow.” “Cows!” “MJ! Another cow!”

Every time, MJ gives a slow, deliberate blink. 

“Oh my God. Cow-puppies!”

“You mean calves, Pete?”

“No,” He shakes his head, mumbling under his breath. “Cow-puppies.”

He’s not sure if MJ laughs at that, but he can definitely see the slightly-pained humor in her eyes as she glares at him. 

“Did you know that a cow can walk up a flight of stairs, but it can’t walk back down?” Peter even starts reading off a list of fun cow facts from different farming websites. 

Again, anything to keep him distracted.

Anything.

“The average domestic cow sleeps only four hours a day.”

“Cows are devotional mothers and are known to walk miles to find their calves. Aww that’s cute!”

“There are more than 800 different breeds of cows around the world. Wow. That’s… That’s a lot.”

“Cows drink the equivalent to an entire tub of bathwater each day.”

“You know, most people think that cows have four stomachs, but apparently that’s not true. Get this—” Peter starts when he gets to the end of his list of fifty fun facts. “It’s one stomach. With four chambers. Crazy, right?”

“Mmhmm,” MJ hums, staring straight ahead at the road. She seems to relax at the few seconds of silence that follow. “You seem really interested in cows today.”

Peter struggles to answer at first. “Oh, oh yeah. You know. They’re just… a super cool animal. Super… Super, uh… interesting.”

MJ’s mouth hangs open a bit as she passes him a side-eye glance. “Uh-huh.”

Finally, when they reach the half-way point, they switch drivers, Peter thanking God herself for giving him the chance to focus on something that’s not MJ. Or cows. It’s much easier at that point, driving being something that easily takes his mind off of everything going on. And MJ does help with that to some degree; she reads for a while in his first hour of driving—how she’s able to do that and not want to hurl all over the dashboard, he has no idea. 

And it still seems fine, normal even, when she puts her book down, stretching while suggesting they find something new to listen to. “Ned made us this playlist to listen to on the way. Said something about how it’ll ‘hype us up,’ whatever the hell that means,” she snorts. 

Peter grins, his hands relaxed at ten-and-two. “Ooo yeah. Sounds good.”

“Or, we can always just listen to Old MacDonald on repeat. You know, since you seem to love cows so much.”

Peter sighs in slight embarrassment, lips pressing together into a thin line to suppress a smile.

When the first song that comes on is  Let’s Stay Together, and Al Green sings the words  I, I’m so in love with you,  Peter thinks once again that he might be in trouble. 

Peter quickly tries to turn it down, but MJ stops his hand. “Wait, wait. I like this song,” she says as she pushes his hand back to the wheel.

He just keeps telling himself that it’s not a big deal, it’s just a song, and soon, a new one will play. Everything will be fine. He doesn’t need to worry. 

But then, he thinks he might actually kill Ned when  My Girl  comes on, and then again when the Beach Boys start singing  Wouldn’t it Be Nice .

He might really do it. 

In a panic, he just shuts off the music completely. 

“Hey—” MJ starts, reaching for the volume button again. 

“—Music distracts me,” Peter spits out hastily, a bit too defensive to be convincing. “I can’t—I can’t concentrate on the road. Just uh—Just need some quiet.”

He can actually feel her doubtful gaze burning into him, and he doesn’t have to look to see that she’s probably raising a very disbelieving eyebrow right at him. Even so, she doesn’t say anything else, settling back into her seat, bringing a knee up to her chest as she watches the fields pass by. 

The silence, as he had anticipated, doesn’t seem to help. He cringes, mostly at himself. He’s been trying to hard to make this casual, to be nonchalant, and he’s pretty sure he’s done the exact opposite in the nearly five hours that they been stuck in the car. He wants to apologize, but he holds back, afraid that saying anything at all would bring too much attention to how he’s been acting. 

But he also knows that it’s only a matter of hours, minutes, or seconds before MJ calls him out on all this bullshit. Frankly, he’s a little surprised and confused as to why she hasn’t already. 

Maybe she’s just accepted that one of her best friends is one of the weirdest people on planet Earth. 

So, why in the world he thinks it’s a good idea to say what he says next, as they’re driving along more countryside at night, he’s not quite sure. 

“You know that…  Manatees are considered the cows of the sea.”

“Oh, my GOD,” MJ groans. “What are you on?”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” 

“I know you said you were good, but you’re acting really loser-y right now,” MJ glares, but her tone still has that slight hint of worry in it. “Like, way more than usual. Are you okay?”

“I mean, yeah?” Peter sighs. “Kinda. It’s fine. I’m sorry. I just—” He flinches, lips twisting as he tries to think of what to say without giving anything away. He passes a brief glance in her direction, seeing the faint concern in her expression, her face glowing prettily under the blue light of the dashboard. 

He lets out a sharp exhale. “I’m just tired,” he lies. 

She watches him for a moment, and he knows—just knows—that she doesn’t quite believe him. Being tired explains nothing about his behavior. 

But thankfully, she lets it go, or at least she seems to. 

“We can turn the music back on,” Peter speaks again, softly, nodding his head in her direction. “I’m sorry. Again. I’ll—I’ll stop being weird.”

MJ lets out a short sigh before shaking her head with a tired huff of a laugh. “It’s fine, man. Don’t worry about it.”

He flips back on the stereo, trying not to let his heart race as Electric Love plays.

The rest of the drive is spent in a much more comfortable silence, yet there’s still the hint of tension hanging between them after Peter’s weird behavior earlier on. This, he thinks, is something that will keep him up for nights to come. It’ll be that one embarrassing memory his brain decides to remind him of as he’s trying to fall asleep, torturing him. He’ll cringe, wondering why he couldn’t just be cool like any normal person. 

As they get closer and closer to the beach house, and as the time gets close to midnight, with still an hour left, he can see MJ falling asleep in her seat from the corner of his eye. But he can also see her fighting it, trying to stay awake.

And then he wonders if she’s only trying to stay up so she can keep him company. 

“MJ,” He says, voice soft. “You can sleep. It’s fine. I got the rest of the drive.”

With her eyes closed, she lets out a deep breath. “I’m not sleeping. I’m just resting my eyes,” she mumbles sleepily. 

There’s another flip in his stomach, his chest warming as he tries to fight back a smile, not able to think anything else besides how cute she is right now. 

He grins. “Okay. Sure.”

She reaches a hand out to smack him, but she misses. He chuckles under his breath. 

MJ doesn’t have to energy to try again, and soon she seems to have succumbed to her body’s need for rest. 

Peter lets his hand fall to the gear shift between the seats, relaxing. 

But he tenses, feeling MJ’s hand meet his, her skin soft against his own. She doesn’t seem to be awake enough to notice, as she doesn’t move away. He gently moves his hand again, letting his pinkie rest next to hers, his heart swelling, his head swimming in the feeling of just how nice and warm it feels to have her hand with his. 

What he doesn’t notice, however, is the way MJ’s lips curl into a small, soft smile as she finally drifts off to sleep.

#spideychelle #spideychelleweek2k20 #petermj #peter parker #michelle jones #rated: t #2.7k #fic #spideychelleweek #spideychelle week #road trip au

[spidercakes]

Um, some kind of starker AU anyway D:

*

Peter is scrolling through Tony’s social media and he knows he’s being stupid but its like his last brain cell has decided to ride out this idea until it kicks the chair out from under itself, leaving Peter for dead. And he finds pretty much what he expects there too- business stuff, information about his charities, random funny comments about things that Pepper always comments to tell him to delete but he never does. And of course there’s him, he’s all over Tony’s social media too but Peter doesn’t really know how to take it.

People have started to claim that he doesn’t exist and he’s kind of worried maybe he doesn’t. Well, okay he does and he knows he does, but like... maybe not the way he’d like to in Tony’s life. The pictures are all there but its always a shot of his hands around a coffee cup, or his legs thrown over Tony’s with Tony’s hand on his thigh. There’s one of him from behind looking out at the Manhattan skyline and its the only one that comes even close to showing who he is. Hell, until Tony posted it everyone thought he was a girl. Not that there’s a problem with that except like. He isn’t, so.

By the time Tony comes back Peter is convinced that Tony must not really care about him because its not like he ever shows Peter’s face or even hints at who he is as a person, usually its just the pictures no context. He’s sulking on the couch when Tony walks over and drops down beside him, leaning into his side easily. “I missed you,” he murmurs even though he’s only been gone for a few hours and Peter draws him in, wrapping his arms around him because sometimes Tony needs comfort too and it must have been a long day.

A few hours later Tony posts a picture of their hands intertwined onto his Twitter and people go on speculating and Peter doesn’t know what the hell to make of it.

*

Peter is attempting to get his shit together enough to eat some kind of something before class when Tony wraps his arms around him and kisses his cheek. “Hey baby,” he murmurs, sounding sleepy still. Peter smiles because sleepy Tony is adorable and he doesn’t see much of him like this. Between his schedule and his insomnia he rarely even sees Tony sleep let alone sleepy.

“Hey,” he says softly, settling a hand over Tony’s.

“What’s wrong?” he murmurs, head on his shoulder.

He frowns, “nothing.” Which is technically true, confusion over Tony’s lack of actually stating that they’re dating on social media aside. And also the fact that he doesn’t know what he wants to eat yet.

“Baby you’ve been distant for days,” he murmurs. “What’s wrong?”

Its kind of not like him to notice, so Peter’s a little impressed because once he dyed his hair black and it took Tony a week to figure out what was different about him. He hated the black anyway and was happy when he was lucky enough to have it fade fast. Peter sighs, “its nothing,” he says because it isn’t, what Tony sticks on his social media is his business and Peter doesn’t really have a right to complain about it.

“Not if its bothering you. Come on baby, what’s eating at you?” he asks, kissing the side of Peter’s neck and he lets out a soft sigh because Tony knows that’s his weakness.

“How... how come you’ve never posted any pistes of me on your social media?” he asks and Tony frowns.

“I put pictures of you on there all the time,” he says, which is true. Technically.

“But not with my face in them,” Peter says. “I just... I mean no one even really knows that we’re dating and-” he cuts himself off because he knows he’s being stupid.

Tony tilts his head to the side, “and?” he asks, frowning a little.

Peter bites his lip, considers not saying anything but Tony looks so confused so he sighs. “I don’t know, don’t you want people to know we’re together?” he says quietly.

For a few moments Tony says nothing and Peter is well prepared to just go to class and forget he ever said anything but Tony’s arms tighten around him. “Baby I never posted your face because I assumed you didn’t want to deal with the media backlash,” he says. “You don’t seem all that fond of the way the media treats me so I thought-” he shrugs, letting Peter draw his own conclusions.

“So you thought I didn’t want anything to do with that aspect of your life,” he says and Tony nods.

“Its not a small undertaking, I get why you’d want to stay in the shadows,” he says, eyes soft.

Of course that’s never really what Peter wanted so he sighs. “I don’t like the way the media treats you but I can’t just opt out of that part of your life. People will get over my existence eventually and they’ll mostly leave me alone because you’re the one they want to hound anyway. And even if that doesn’t happen I love you, all of you, not just the convenient media free parts of your life,” he says.

Tony spins him around and kisses him softly while Peter curls his arms around his neck. “I’d really like to continue this but I’m going to be late for class,” he murmurs. “Later?” he says, smiling at Tony.

“Of course,” Tony murmurs, “looking forward to it.”

*

Peter is trying his best to focus on physics but he’s hungry because he didn’t eat and the smell of pizza is much more tantalizing than his teacher droning on and on. He’d be tempted to fall asleep except people keep turning back to stare at him and he at first he assumed it was a coincidence but people keep doing it so he frowns. Its not like any of his classmates outside of MJ gave a shit about him before so what’s the deal.

MJ jabs him in the side, “dude, why are you trending on Twitter?” she asks and he shrugs.

“I don’t know,” he mumbles. His Twitter is moderately popular, maybe one of his posts took off. It happens occasionally, though it hasn’t happened to him.

MJ swears softly beside him, giving her phone a wide eyed kind of excited and surprised look and he has no clue what that means.

“You’re dating Tony Stark?” Flash all but shouts from the front of the room, voice going up at the end of his question and wait, Flash goes to this university? Peter swears he hasn’t seen him since high school and not much has changed about him either.

“Uh,” Peter says intelligently, deciding maybe he should investigate Twitter for himself.

Its already open on Tony’s page but the pictures are new and they’re abundant. There’s a picture of Peter wrapped up in Tony’s coat with his nose scrunched up with a cup of coffee, a picture of him laughing at something Tony had said before, one of him and Tony in Italy from the summer, one of him trying desperately to arm wrestle Rhodey and failing at it because he’s a lot stronger than he looks, a picture of him sleeping in Tony’s bed and so on. He looks up to find the whole class staring at him and he sinks in his seat a little.

“Is he as good in bed?” someone asks from behind him and Peter frowns.

“That’s not appropriate,” he mumbles but MJ snorts.

“Yeah, I have to hear about it way too much.”

Flash’s eyes bug out of his head. “You knew?”

She shrugs, “yeah, its no big deal,” she says and Peter knows damn well she didn’t know. But she has heard about their sex life so he’ll give her that and her statement is truthful about Tony’s skill anyway.

*

When they get out of class, which his teacher couldn’t really wrangle away from the news of Peter’s dating life anyway, MJ almost shoves him in a trash can. “Parker what the fuck?” she hisses at him.

“What do you mean what the fuck? And you totally didn’t know about us!” he says, arms crossed.

“I had my suspicions but I was only like... sixty seven percent sure so I didn’t say anything oh my god Tony Stark?” she asks and fangirling looks so weird on her.

“Yeah. He’s um. Pretty great,” he says.

“Pretty great, that’s all I get?” Tony asks and Peter squeaks, turning around to find Tony standing there looking amused.

“I mean um, well, uh-” he stutters out, unsure what to make of this whole thing.

“Go suck dick Peer, the fuck are you still doing here?” MJ asks, pushing him forward. Tony snorts, shaking his head and Peter nods because yeah, this isn’t even weird its just that usually Happy picks him up not Tony so he should get his shit together.

He walks over to Tony, threading their fingers together but Tony pulls him in and kisses him. “I love you,” he murmurs and Peter melts a little.

“Love you too,” he says, glaring at the first person to decide to take a picture of them. Well, he supposes he has tomorrow’s headlines to look forward to until people lose interest but for now he’ll deal because he really does love Tony. “You could have kept that picture of me sleeping to yourself,” he tells Tony as they leave.

Tony wraps an arm around his waist, “you look so cute though, I had to,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to Peter’s cheek. He so does not, he looks like a chipmunk sleeping in satin but he lets Tony have it.

#tony stark x peter parker #starker #alternate universe #fanfiction

[randompony03]

Not In Kansas Anymore

Heyooo! So a bit ago, I had a little convo with @spiderversetweets and then I decided to make a fic based off of it, because I'm hella cringey. This might be bad, but whatev. This is the refined version, it's also posted on Wattpad and some of the writting is different.

Wattpad link:

Characters: Helena/MindFang (oc), Virgil/SpiderGale, Roman/Royal Slinger, Patton/LoveBite, Logan/Arachne, Thomas/Rainbow Weaver, MJ (oc)

Summary: MindFang gets stick in a certain spidey boy's room, and is ultimately stuck in his dimension as well. How will she get home?

--------------------------------------------------

MindFang opened her eyes and groaned. What the hell had just happened? One minute she was swinging through Laurence and the next she was zipping down a tube of big time acid trips only to wake up in pain and...in a dark purple room? She sat up and looked around. There were band posters, black clothing items scattered about, and black out curtains. "What kinda emo lives here?" She mused to herself. "Where are we?" Asked the tiny voice of Rosie as she scuttled up MindFang's arm. "I have no clue." MindFang responded. She pulled down the hood of her cloak and took off her mask. A confused look came over her round, freckled face. She pulled out her phone and opened Twitter.

'MFangOfficial: Ok y'all, don't panic (I'm already doing enough of that), but I'm suddenly in someone's room. It's dark and really purple, but I have no idea how I got here.'

With that, she posted it. She signed and scrolled around until she started getting blown up with notifications. 'OMG, you ok?' 'Sis, you need us Topekans to rescue you this time?' '@MFangOfficial idk why, but mood.' She smiled and replied to any and all of them. One in particular grabbed her attention. 'SpiderGaleOfficial: Don't touch anything, I'm on my way.' She stared for a moment at the response. SpiderGale? Was that..a YouTuber? Or was she not alone? 

'MFangOfficial:@SpiderGaleOfficial I give you my word. I like your spider though. Also, thanks.'

 MindFang thought a moment. Could there really be someone else with abilities like hers? Well, outside her family that is. She watched as Rosie climbed up the leg of the table with a spider tank resting on it. The rose-knee curiously peered through the glass. The spider on the other side scuttled up to her.

'SpiderGaleOfficial: He's a chill little dude.'

 MindFang glanced back up at the spiders with a smile as they began to chatter at each other.

'MFangOfficial: Indeed he is. I kinda wanna hold him, but I promised. He's a tarantula right?'

 She sat down on the floor. Holding up her mask she rubbed a thumb over it in thought. MindFang pulled the mask back on. She didn't know if this person was actually a superhero. They could be some Average Joe. The last thing she needed was some civilian finding out her identity. That would only add on to the stress today had brought her.

'SpiderGaleOfficial: Yes, he is. If he lets you hold him go ahead.'

 MindFang smiled brightly under her mask. She gently lowered her hand into the tank and offered it. The tarantula inside came closer. He hesitated before gingerly walking onto her hand. He happily chirped at her a greeting as she held him up. Rosie jumped onto her and made her way to her new buddy.

'MFangOfficial: You're a real pal. Oh he's so sweet.'

"Who are you texting, Helena?" The tiny voice of Rosie asked. Helena looked up from her phone. "The owner of your new friend." She told her. "Ask them for his name." Rosie said glancing back to the other tarantula. Helena cocked a brow. "Can't you ask him?" Rosie giggled at her. "Yes, and I already did, but you may as well make conversation." She said with a playful smirk in her voice. Helena sighed.

'What's his name btw?'

'SpiderGaleOfficial: I'll tell you when I get there.'

'MFangOfficial: 👌'

 Helena eyed her spider companion. "You're a little shit, ya know." She said. "Don't forget it." Rosie laughed. Helena chuckled a bit herself. She felt a tingling sensation in the back of her head. "His name is JD." Came a new voice.

 The masked girl turned around to see a boy in a purple and white onesie climbing in through the window. Helena's eyes widened as his did as well. The rest of the world seemed to tune out as an aura of purple and dark grey with bolts of bright lightning seemed to surround him. "..you're just like me." They spoke in unison. Helena went over and began to circle him. "That can't be right. I thought it was just me and my siblings. Is that hoodie built in?" She stopped in front of him, "God I love your suit." SpiderGale chuckled. He extended his hand and she shook it. Helena took off her mask once more. "By the way, I'm Helena." She told him, a smile settling onto to her freckled cheeks. The boy removed his own mask and shook out his purple hair. "Virgil." Helena couldn't help but chuckle. "Nice to see we have similar taste in hairstyles." She said, pointing out their heads being shaved on the same side, hers being wavy and auburn while his was straight and naturally dark with the longer part dyed. 

 Virgil took his turn to pace around her. Studying her. The two tarantulas on her shoulders, one of them being JD,  the silver lining on her suit and cloak, the cool color scheme, the thigh-high Nightvale purple boots. "How did you get in here?" He asked. Helena ran a hand through her half a head of hair. "Well, that's the thing. I'm not entirely sure. I was sucked into some colorful tunnel and then woke up in here. That probably makes me sound like a crackhead though." Virgil stopped in front of her. "It sounds like you need to go home."

  "So you said you can clearly communicate with spiders?" Talyn asked Helena as they examined her. "Uh, yeah." Helena watched them. Joan stood back and took notes. "Interesting." Talyn mused. Virgil cleared his throat, gaining everyone's attention. "I think you're getting a little off topic." He said, raising a brow. "Oh, right. Sorry, it's just so fascinating is all." Talyn apologized, stepping away from Helena. They went over to join Joan and began quickly muttering to them.

 Virgil stepped over to Helena. "Sorry about that, they tend to get sidetracked when something tickles their curiosity." He explained. "It's fine, I guess. I just didn't think my powers were all that interesting or whatever." She shrugged. 

"Well, they are when my friends and I can only partially make out what they say."

"There's more than one of you??"

"Yeah. What, are you the only one where you come from?"

"Well, no. My sister got bit as well and my brother made something called a symbiote."

Virgil raised his eyebrows. "Huh, we have someone with a symbiote here too." Helena looked down at the floor. "What the fuck." She whispered. 

 Joan and Talyn came back over to them. "Ok, after talking it over we think we can get you home. Although, it may take a while to make the machinery needed." Joan told Helena. "How long would 'a while' be?" She asked. "About five weeks if we can get Logan to help. Interdimensional transport isn't exactly common or anything." Talyn explained. Helena felt her stomach drop. Five weeks? Oh God, what was she supposed to tell her parents? Could she even contact them? Tears began to sting her eyes. She turned around and walked a few paces away. No. God no. Not here. Not now. 

 "Helena, you ok?" She heard Virgil's voice ask. "YeAH." She replied. Damn it, that voice crack would give her away. Hesitantly, Virgil placed a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, look at me." Despite every red flag her brain was sending her about letting him see her like this, she faced him. "Breath with me. In for three, hold for four, out for seven." He instructed as he demonstrated for her. After a few rounds of this, Helena had seemed to calm down. "Better?" He asked. She nodded. "Better"

 Helena had been taken and introduced to Virgil's friends; Logan, Roman, Patton, and Thomas, who seemed more like a tired dad than a friend. Patton flopped down next to her on Thomas' couch. "So, if you're stuck here for five weeks, where are you going to stay?" He asked her. Helena's face fell. "Oh, uh, I hadn't really thought of that." Helena admitted. "And what are you going to wear? Don't get me wrong, I love your suit, but that can't be all you have, is it?" Roman added. "...My civilian clothes are back home." She mumbled. The boys all looked at each other before leaning in and quietly discussing the situation. Helena tuned them out and began to fret all over again. Where was she going to stay? Perhaps she could just bum around town and live like the homeless for the next few weeks? Did they have a homeless shelter perhaps?

 The boys stopped talking and turned back to Helena. "Well, I guess you could stay with me for now." Thomas offered. The girl was taken aback. "Oh no, I don't wanna be a bother!" She argued. Thomas shook his head. "You wouldn't. It's not like these guys don't frequently come and go from here." He insisted. Helena was about to debate the offer all over again when the door opened.

 A red-haired man walked in and over to Thomas. He slipped his arms around the other's shoulders. "Hey, guys." He greeted with a smile. "Hey, MJ." The boys replied in unison. The man, known as MJ, spotted Helena. The girl was caught off guard and ended up making eye contact. She nervously waved. "Who's this?" MJ asked, standing up straight. "This is Helena. She's a long ways from home." Thomas explained. 

"How far?"

"A whole other world far."

"Yikes."

"Yeah. I was just telling her that she could stay here with us until Joan and Talyn finish their transporter." 

MJ's eyes shined as he looked back up at Helena. "I think that's a great idea." Helena mentally sighed. It seemed there was no way of getting out of this.

 Living with Thomas and MJ turned out to be pretty nice. Thankfully she was able to give her parents an excuse for her absence. Since she had been at the library, last they knew, she had gotten some of her friends to agree to be her scapegoat. As far as her parents were concerned, she was spending the next few weeks at with the Loockes. Through her experience there, she had come to know the rest of the boys pretty well. Roman had insisted on taking her out shopping so she could look her best. Thanks to him, she had practically an entirely new wardrobe. Patton had shown her how to bake practically every kind of cookie. When Logan wasn't helping Joan and Talyn, she'd let him ramble about whatever topic he wished. She thought the number of things he knew was fascinating. Virgil was a lot like her in some ways. They often sat around sending memes to each other and discussing horror movies. By the end of it, they had all become good friends. The time did come, however, for Helena to go home.

 She had been sitting on the couch drawing with Roman and talking about cartoons they watched as kids when Logan came into the room. "Helena, it's finished." He informed her. She stared back at him in wonder and blinked a few times. "It is?" Logan nodded. She looked down at her sketchpad. "I honestly thought I'd be a little more excited to go home." She said with a half-hearted chuckle. Roman reached over and patted her back.. "We'll miss you too." A sad smile rested on his face. He understood what she meant.

 Helena went to pack what belongings she had. While folding and putting away all the clothes Roman had picked out for her, the door to the room burst open. Before she could fully process the outburst a pair of arms were hrown thrownaround her. "I can't believe it's over already!" Wailed the voice of Patton. Helena smiled when she realized who it was that attack-hugged her. She returned the hug, getting a bit misty-eyed. "I know. I'm gonna miss you,, Pat." She said softly. "Ok Patton, give her some space." Virgil laughed from his leaning position in the doorway. Patton pulled back with a slight whine and glossy eyes. "How did you guys know I was leaving right now?" Helena asked them. Roman stepped in. "I may have texted them." He admitted. 

 Logan came into the room as well. "Helena, could I see your phone?" The girl complied and handed it over to him. He took off the back and slid what looked like some kind of SD card into it. He popped the back on again and handed it back to her. "When you activate that, it should allow you to keep your contact with us." He explained. Helena smiled so warmly. "Thank you, Logan." Virgil punched him in the arm. "You softie." He teased. 

 Eventually, Helena had been all packed up, even between all the chatter. She had said her final goodbyes and received an especially long hug from Patton and MJ at the same time. With one more round of goodbyes, she was transported back home in a flash of bright white. 

 After she had come back inside and spun a tale of what she had 'been up to with the Loockes, she went down to her room and flopped onto her bed. Her phone buzzed as Rosie crawled out of her pocket. Helena pulled out the device. 5 messages from SpiderGang. A smile crept over her face as she tapped on the chat bubble.

PattonCake: Hi Helena!

Sir-Sings-A-Lot: With one more round of goodbyes, she was transported back home in a flash of blindingly bright white.

 When she opened her eyes, she was standing on the corner of her block. Looks like those two had a pretty precise aim. She walked up to the front door of her home and knocked. Once her parents had finished interrogating her about what she and the Loockes had been up to, she escaped downstairs to her room. Flopping onto her bed, she felt her phone buzz. Rosie crawled out of her jacket pocket as she pulled the device out. 5 messages from Spider Gang. A smile crept onto her face as she tapped the chat bubble.

PattonCake: Hi Helena!

Sir-Sing-A-Lot: @Bi-Stander Greetings!

Pocket-Protector: If the chip is functioning, salutations.

Dark-And-Stormy-Night: Yo

Could-Be-Gayer: Hey, kiddo

Tears of joy began to sting her eyes as she read over the messages.

Bi-Stander: Hey guys

--------------------------------------------------

And that's all she (I) wrote! This is set in the world of the spiderverse au made by the lovely @sugarglider9603 and @ask-spiderverse-virgil . If you guys read this, I hope you like it!

#sanders sides #patton sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #thomas sanders #virgil sanders #virgil anxiety #virgil #sanders sides virgil #ts virgil #thomas sanders virgil #ts roman #ts logan #ts patton #ts sides #fanfic #fanfiction #au #spiderverse au #MJ (oc) #Helena (oc)

[comicteaparty]

January 22nd-January 28th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from January 22nd, 2020 to January 28th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

How do you react to comics going on hiatus, and how does that affect your readership for it?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Being a webcomic artist, I'm always very understanding when an author needs a break. Life happens, and most of us are hobbyists. I will wait as long as it takes for the comic to come back, even if that means years. I'll keep checking in every few months unless the artist makes a post saying the comic is dead and they're moving on (and if 'moving on' means starting a new comic, I'll usually start following it). I have quite a few life circumstances that have forced long hiatuses of my own comics, so I feel it would be a tad hypocritical of me to give up on a comic that needs a long break or has to update very infrequently for a while. Also since I have trouble following a lot of comics at once, my reading list is fairly short and it's easier for me to be very dedicated to and patient with the comics I do read.(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Even before I started doing webcomics, I knew it wasn't the end of the world when a comic went on hiatus. Like, it's free entertainment, I don't blame the author for not sticking to a specific schedule. As for if it affects my readership... yeah? I usually stop checking in after a year or so if a comic hasn't had any updates, and even in that time I don't check up very often. And I don't often re-read hiatus'd comics until they come back off hiatus (as a sort of refresher) so they don't usually get my readership that way either.

varethane

I don't have any hard feelings when creators go on hiatus, whatever their reasons; life happens, webcomics are a lot of work for (often) little compensation, and people's priorities change over time. It's fine. I am one of those readers who is often prone to having a short attention span, though, so I confess that if a comic goes on hiatus and its creator isn't active on social media, there's a pretty good chance I'll lose track of it. And if the comic returns after a hiatus of more than a year, it may take some months before I will come back as a reader, just because I would need to reread the story in order to catch back up with what's going on.

SAWHAND

I don't tend to keep up with webcomics on a day-to-day basis anyway. I prefer to wait and then be able to binge-read a whole chapter or at least a few pages at a time. I actually really like when comics do a brief hiatus in between chapters to build up a backlog of pages and then post a lot of pages quickly (more than someone usually would do anyway) and then go back on hiatus. Kind of like seasons on tv.

Deo101 [Millennium]

I just had a hiatus that went longer than a year so I can't really fault an artist for needing a break. I understand, and also it doesnt bother me too much because I just read whenever there is an update, it's not like I'm checking at the scheduled time or anything! When it updates, I'll be there.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Life happens, circumstances change, people grow. So many of us are making webcomics at very transformative times of our lives - we can outgrow the stories, get tired of them, or begin to associate them with bad memories (poor artistic partnerships, commercial failures, etc). If a really good webcomic I follow goes on hiatus, of course I'll be disappointed. But behind every webcomic is an author with a life. If the webcomic is keeping their life from improving, then screw the webcomic. I'm always far more concerned about the person.(edited)

I get SO much joy watching webcomics come back after a long hiatus. It's worth any sadness felt during the hiatus itself. And I'm not happy just because the story is back - but because it's a sign that the author has taken care of themselves. You can often feel it in the new pages. It's really cool and good to see.

2

January 23, 2020

Kabocha

I think it depends on the comic. I prefer it when a creator can say, "hey, I'm going on hiatus" so I know to stop checking (or to set my expectations accordingly). They don't necessarily have to post an end date, but if they can, that's always good! Sometimes creators just stop updating, and that's fine too. But one's comic's site is going to be the central hub for anything regarding your comic's news, too. There are some comics where... I'm a little less understanding of hiatuses with complete silence -- and these are usually ones that have an actual publisher backing them and paying for the project's completion. Like, I get that life gets in the way, but when making said comic is your job -- or you have a perceived contractual obligation, maybe your publisher ought to step up and say something if the project is on hold or delayed or something. There's something about the line between "I am doing this project for free and the occasional donation" versus "I am getting paid for this project's completion as a product" that kind of... I dunno, makes the whole thing feel a little different? Like, sure, it might be up for free online, but like... when there's an actual publisher or platform paying the creator to make it it and they've got editors and stuff... It's less like someone's brain baby and more like a product. I actually have a folder in my favorites for comics on hiatus, but ArchiveBinge also tells me when they updated last, so... Not a huge deal. My ability or desire to read a project isn't hugely affected by a comic's status on hiatus, but I have found with some comics that come back years after going on a break... Well, I've changed enough that I'm no longer their target audience. And it can suck to realize that.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) Oh man, your comment about being able to feel that an author has taken care of themselves after coming back from a long hiatus reminded me of when I once returned a comic from a 3 year long hiatus. I had put it on hiatus after a ‘friend’ completely ripped it apart and essentially called it trash. I was already going through some really bad stuff IRL and I lost all motivation to keep going. But three years later I came back, and the colours in the pages were so much brighter and more vibrant. The change was so obvious a reader actually gave me an impassioned speech about how the previous muted, greyish palette was a a better fit for the story. But only a few pages later they changed their mind and said they were wrong; the more vivid colours worked after all. I think maybe they could see how happy I was to be working on it again.... and maybe just how much happier I was in general. Sorry for the long anecdote; that second paragraph just really hit home for me. (edited)

MJ Massey

I think it depends on a few factors for me. In general I am pretty understanding of hiatus in general - it can be really good for the creator to take a break and set things in order for themselves as well as putting out work they enjoy rather than rushing to get a page out. Especially if this is someone's side gig. I appreciate it all the more if the creator can be honest. Even if they can't give a return date, coming out and saying "I can't work on this comic right now" is enough and perfectly fine

I get annoyed if someone who is PAID to make a comic just disappears and won't take responsibility. If it's your job, then you can't just run away from it. Again, even saying something like "I cannot work on the comic for now" is fine, but don't just run off and make some vague remarks on your social media that's not even where your readers normally engage with you.

I also agree that any partners, like a publisher or editor, that might be employing said artist could also step up and let readers know what's going on. If any of that happens, I am happy to wait as long as it takes

Readers are more understanding than you think, it's okay to just come out and say you're gonna miss updates, need time off, etc. You don't need to say anything more than that.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I'm not quite understanding the hostility towards people who get paid for creating webcomics, but hiatuses aren't something i could really call our personal business to make any calls regarding their obligations. Like @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) said, life happens and circumstances change. I'm pretty sure whomever the creator is with has their own reasons as creative projects evolve differently for everyone and that their parties concerned have dealt with it in a necessary way. That is just the nature of them, we won't know or understand the full picture, and while i get being disappointed, it's not something that can be helped! I encourage hiatuses in fact, because webcomics are A LOT of work!! It can give the creator time for revisions, writing the story, and general self reflection of the project. I've stated this before on twitter, but ppl tend to forget that webcomics are typically made by 1-2 ppl and can produce the quality/quantity easily created by a small studio. Take a break!

Kabocha

It's not a hostility thing necessarily, but I do think that when, like, an actual publisher is involved, there should be some sort of expectation of... I dunno, communication? Traditionally published books and such get delayed (and canceled), but usually there's some form of communication as to the change in release dates or if it's going to come out at all. I think that's more or less the expectation with something that's being paid for by a publisher: That there's some form of communication between the audience regarding the story's state or future. It doesn't have to be a total "HI THIS IS MY LIFE" just more of a "hi the comic's on hold". But hiatuses, I think, are maybe different than a break? As a creator, I traditionally take a break between chapters to do editing and such, but I think a hiatus tends to be more... unplanned for. (and I'm not exempt from going on hiatus - I've had issues this winter that made it necessary for me to tell my readers "hi I'm not updating until april". So I'm sympathetic to health/life -- but I do think a "hi the comic's on hold" on the comic's site is warranted in a lotta cases.)

(or hell, even a "the comic's canceled" is fine too hoo boy, I just saw one that I wasn't aware of that got canceled for life issues... I feel for the creators.)

RebelVampire

I'm kind of on the higher standard for creators who are being paid to do it as a job train. At least a higher standard of communication. Cause I never really consider the hiatus itself the problem, but how the author communicates about the hiatus. Cause again, when being paid to do something, I just kind of expect more professionalism, and communication is a huge part of professionalism.

Kabocha

I think webcomics with a publisher -- like, an actual "hi we are paying you to produce this work" that isn't just patreon -- it's more of a commercial work. In one of the cases I have in mind, they're paid to do it per-page, through a well-known webcomics publisher. Sure, the creator loses out, because they're not being paid, but it is also a commercial work in the end. They have an editor, ostensibly someone to communicate with them and the manager, and went through some sort of acquisitions process to sell the work to that publisher. Kinda like the difference between "hi this is my fanfic" versus "hi this is my book that I got put through a small press pub"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I agree. Ghosting your paying customers is very unprofessional. Just informing readers that there’s a break or cancellation feels necessary if money’s involved. I‘d feel pretty burned if a comic I was pledging for on patreon just stopped updating for more than a few months without any communication whatsoever. A quick note that says ‘Hey, my comic is on break for an indeterminate amount of time because I need to take care of some things / am creatively exhausted / whatever other vague reason’ and I would understand. But if I’m paying the creator and they just vanish without a word, you can bet I won’t trust them enough to pay them again even if they come back later.

RebelVampire

Yeah. Those are my feels too. That it doesn't even need to be some essay message. It's just the giving a heads up so you're not sitting there staring wondering if someone fell into the abyss.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

You can say Tessa Stone, it's okay.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I... I don’t know who that is?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

She was the author of Hanna is Not a Boy's Name. Very popular webcomic, did a kickstarter for a book, then vanished with the money, and reappeared four years later working for another company.

Kabocha

That's... Not who was in mind.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh wow that’s scummy.

I’d read the comic waaaaay back but dropped it long before there was a KS.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Yeah. Other than that, I always understand when hiatuses happen, we all have lives outside our comics.

RebelVampire

Professional comics aside, overall, for me, my reaction to a comic going on hiatus depends on a ton of factors. I will preface this first part, is that I'm always understanding of it. Life happens, interests change, etc. etc. etc. I would never tell a creator not to go on hiatus or that they were magically a bad creator or something for needing to stop for a bit (or indefinitely). People should take care of themselves both physically and emotionally first, so I get why hiatuses happen. That being said, I as a reader also have my own life. And the fact of the matter is, there are thousands of comics out there to read - many of which are not on hiatus. So I'd be lying if I said a hiatus had no effect on whether I'd continue to read a comic. That being said, it's not like a hiatus will make me instantly drop a comic either. This is where the many factors come in. Like how much do I love the comic? Has the creator communicated about the length of the hiatus and given a heads up? Does the comic have a very unreliable history of hiatusing and coming back and then immediately hiatusing etc.. Which again, I get and sympathize with creators and hiatuses. But there's a point where you just gotta move on if the comic's updating isn't to your liking.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

also i just want to chime in and say that as one of those people who get paid to make my comic i don't appreciate it being called commercial work. It's still the creators property and honestly the money earned doesn't change the product, nor should it change the 'merit' of a hiatus. Hiatuses are also planned and not planned. They are both breaks and unseen stops in work, they are necessary and needed- much like vacation time or sick leave at other jobs. Having been paid for making comics shouldn't differ with who is more worthy of one. Again, they all happen with reasons the public doesn't need to fully know bc even if the work is produced 'free to read', it's still not an obligation to the readers for any full disclosure. I get being dissapointed, it's a work you enjoy, but like any type of work, schedules change, lives conflict, and projects get canceled.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t think anyone is saying that we mind hiatuses when comic artists are being paid, we all explicitly stated we mind poor communication about it from the creator

Big difference

varethane

the main thing I look sideways at is a creator who ghosts their existing audience and goes incommunicado for years, and then returns with either the same product or something very similar. I'm not so much mad, as.... unlikely to keep reading their work, even once it's back? Or I'll have trouble convincing myself to dive back in, even if it still looks like it should be my thing. I'm thinking of a specific comic I used to read called Astray3, which stopped updating with no news updates sometime in like..... 2011? And then after a year or so the website went down, and I assumed that was just.... it, the creator had left comics. Then just this year I was thinking about it while talking to friends and did a google search, and discovered that it was back On a new webhost, totally rebooted and fresh, with gorgeous new art

I had no idea, lol. I guess it had been back for maybe a year or two? It's really beautiful, and if I'd found it fresh I'd probably be super excited to dive in, but I haven't gotten around to it yet and that's the only real reason I can think of as to why.

This is a personal thing though. I don't know why all that happened or what led the creator to shelve the comic, I bear them no hard feelings. I just..... may or may not start reading again (maybe I will when I get some time!! Who knows lol)

keii4ii

@varethane I gotta say I'm sort of guilty of that. I stopped working on my previous comic after I'd gotten pretty far in the story. Things happened IRL and I just couldn't keep working on that story. My main site host died (the hosting business closed), and I didn't leave a proper goodbye on my SJ mirror. Then a few years later, I came back elsewhere with a new comic. X'D I don't really have a point here (yet?), just waving a hand from the other side of the fence.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) im responding to the commercial work comment

varethane

I don't even really think there IS a fence, lol. There are so many reasons why I may or may not read a comic, up to and including how I happen to feel on a given day; when I read something really often has more to do with my mood than with how much I feel like it 'should' appeal to me, so long breaks in updates are just one more ingredient in the big old soup of 'will I jump into this story today'

keii4ii

Yeah, readers come and go all the time, for all sorts of reasons

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'd also like to wave my hand from the side of the fence of "basically going completely radio silent" I did it because I had an incredibly difficult personal experience, that I didnt really want to share with all of my readers, and I don't think I should HAVE to share what happened in order for it to be valid for me to have dropped off like that for a while.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Exactly what Deo said

varethane

while I agree you don't need to say why, a quick news update saying 'hey something came up and this won't update for awhile, maybe forever' would be appreciated in a lot of cases

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

but the thing is, nobody said you have to say what happened It doesn't have to be a total "HI THIS IS MY LIFE" just more of a "hi the comic's on hold". like it's the difference between saying "there won't be updates for a while" and just leaving the comic hanging on the latest page with no comment.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, I don’t think anyone needs to leave a reason. But if people are paying you, just a ‘Hey this is on a break’ to the audience.

Deo101 [Millennium]

I did say "hi I'm gonna be on hiatus!" and people did still get upset with me for being gone so long so :/

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

well they were rude

varethane

I don't read anything as obsessively as I used to, but one of the first webcomics I ever read trailed off forever with 'see you next week!' as the last news update lmao

I went back to that homepage like a million times

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Theres no winning with it honestly. I haven't had a hiatus with my comic im working on now, but a previous one earned us threats when we had a break

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

People getting upset isn’t your fault. You communicated, and that’s all you needed to do. We all know some readers can be fickle or downright rude.(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

IN THEIR DEFENSE i did say "brief hiatus" cause the situation around it was really weird, and then it was a very not brief one

varethane

no excuse for bein rude about it tho >:U sorry to hear about that!

keii4ii

Yeeeah

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

The threats that we got and harassment definitely made me realize that you don't owe ppl any thing. It's your work, and at the end of the day, you're the one in charge. We literally don't know the reasons to the breaks of a fave creator, it could be something as simple as boredom to something dire. I again i understand the want for communication but there are times where it just doesn't come first or at all.

I think in the situation of finding a ks or something u paid for directly? Yes, you deserve that right to know. But a project that isn't going to affect u in that way, well, it's a mystery we're not owed sometimes

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah I'm just gonna get back to making it, and if people are going to leave and be upset with me I... cant control that... so I shouldnt try or worry about it. just offering the perspective of someone who p much did drop off the face of the earth

oh yeah for something youve paid for its different

Kabocha

Allow me to say that when I say commercial work, I mean it strictly in a "This is a thing that you are making money or aiming to turn a profit from." That's it. There's a difference in expectations, I think, for something where the creator is doing it as their job vs the creator doing it as a hobby. (but also -- like, if you have a publisher or an agent, they should be stepping in to help you field things like communication!!)

But also yes -- my essential point is that communication is key.

And yes, there is an overlap between hobby and earning money off said hobby, but once a thing is available for consumption as something you're earning income off of, I think the expectations ought to be slightly different. I think it's fair to expect someone to say "hi I'm taking a break" on the comic site. Edited to clarify the "income" part of this -- I mean like, a significant portion of your income. Tips are always appreciated, but don't generate an obligation in any sense of the imagination imo. Or like. Yanno, a publishing deal? I dunno. But that gets into contractual stuff.(edited)

spacerocketbunny

As long as someone didn't literally run off with your money, I think a bit more empathy and compassion can be exercised, even if the only communication that's provided is radio silence. It just happens man, sometimes life sucks and you don't get to have a word in edge-wise. There's just so many factors as to why it can happen, it's not a divide between who does and doesn't get a paycheck for their work. Stuff happens and at the end of the day it's still free content that's available to you.

Like @RebelVampire said too, it's totally up to you what you do with your engagement when hiatuses come up

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Agreed

Basically, i hope that if ever the case a creator drops from their project without notice or any word, readers express concern and compassion

Kabocha

That is a fair expectation -- and readers need to remember not to be jerks about it.

Mei

Reading through all of this was super interesting. I think hiatuses are just something that in a medium like webcomics is something to almost 'expect'? if that makes sense? Whether it's because of personal reasons, or work reasons, or any reason that we as readers are not privy to, I think it's part of the process. Of course it's great when creators mention they're going on a hiatus, but I suppose it's also having that understanding that sometimes creators may lose the drive or motivation for what they're creating, and they need a break from it. But yeah, I think it'd be awesome for readers to show understanding for webcomics going on hiatus for a short while or indefinitely. They're a LOT of work and most of the time life takes precedent over that?

RebelVampire

I just want to add myself that jerk readers are a diff issue all together and they are legit not the readers you should care about. Cause at the end of the day, you will never ever make them happy whether you communicate or not. So ignore them and do what you need. The communication is for everyone else who isn't rude and likes your comic (whether a vocal fan or a silent fan). Cause frankly, I think it also shows a certain amount of respect as well for readers when the author communicates their status. But just to clarify in case it wasn't clear in my own statement, you are not obligated to share your life story. TBH, I don't even read people's life essays for their reasons in a lot of cases cause it's their personal business. The reasons for the hiatus are largely irrelevant. But you can still leave a small message that says "Hey I'm not gonna be updating for a bit." Like that's not an exaggeration. That's all you have to say. XD Last, I do want to add, of course there are exceptions to this with extenuating circumstances. Like I know a few people who have had all means of communication break for them - and that of course is understandable then. Since it's not that they didn't want to communicate, it's that they literally had no choice in the matter.

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[dcngereuse]

Kathryn Merteuil, 24, bisexual, demiromantic, cisfemale, ENTJ Enneagram Type 3w2; model, heiress, socialite, entrepreneur is it just me, or is that literally Kathryn Merteuil from Cruel Intentions?

Do you think I relished the fact that I had to act like Mary Sunshine 24/7 so I could be considered a lady? Fuck that. If I had been honest about myself before the age of politically-correct twitter, Mœurs would’ve never made it big. I was the Marcia fucking Brady of the Upper East Side, and I still wanted to kill myself. There's your psychoanalysis, Dr. Freud. Now drop the People Magazine, and let’s just do what we came here to do. I’m depressingly sober, and I wanna fuck. Tell me — are you in, or are you out?

full name: kathryn odette merteuil

birthday: 2 april 1995

signs: aries sun, cancer moon, leo rising

love language: quality time, physical touch

soundtrack: “ still sane ” by lorde ( alt: if u seek amy by britney spears )

Bio Points — addiction tw, drugs tw

born and raised in paris, france, kathryn is the daughter of xavier merteuil, chairman and CEO of a multinational luxury goods conglomerate, and as his only child, she is also the sole heir to the corporations. when the french billionaire married the a-list actress margaret simmons, attention stuck to them and never left. born to a life under the spotlight meant it followed kathryn around, too

kathryn’s parents were a mess and the press loved them. she was thirteen when her parents divorced. her mother got custody of her due to a minor allegation against xavier and his company — one of mommy’s brilliant plans, kathryn soon realized. after that, she went to live with her in new york, seeing her dad in paris from to time. not long after that, her mother remarried and suddenly, kathryn had a two new men in her life

kathryn has been modelling both couture and commercial ever since she was born. the media liked featuring the disaster couple, but they adored the little princess that charmed her way into everyone’s lives — the french sweetheart beloved by all

at 18, she started her own fashion empire, mœurs — a luxury brand that sold high end everything from accessories to lingerie. convinced that she held nothing but promise, her her father supported and funding it all the way. his only condition was that she get a business degree to solidify her hold on his corporations which she did

when kathryn was 14, she started to develop a not-so-loving relationship with drugs. she started with mj and eventually worked her way up until she owned a a little crucifix that doubled as a vial for coke and had it with her at all times

she hit rock bottom late last year. drug scandals, celebrity drama, twitter stans and haters — all that stuff. it was a mess, and everyone loved seeing how the kathryn merteuil fell from her gilded throne. as punishment, her parents made her take a break from new york, so she ended up in shermer. her inheritance, her contract with her modeling agency, and her time in the spotlight was all put on hold. she had to recover and get on the wagon. now she’s trying to clean up her act, still somewhat torn whether or not she’s doing it for show or for real this time

Personality

actually a smortie — kathryn’s got p big brains ok, she just never bothered to showcase it in school or wtvr bc she don’t need it; she hot n rich. she kinda has some principled views on things, but they’re also shoved in the dark and end up twisted because of what she wants to preserve n achieve. her love for how people see her superceded all that wordy brainy jazz. so long as they know she’s pretty and business smart, she was golden

image-obsessed as sheet — the list of things kathryn wouldn’t do for the sake of preserving her name is barely a list. she did everything she could since ‘95, and then it all went to shit. still, she remains as charismatic and strong-willed as ever. things may have fucked up, but she’s still confident in herself. it’s other people that’s shitty, not her

manipulative as phuck — she doesn’t care how she gets there or who she hurts, she has to get there. makes sense bc she doesn’t handle emotions well at all. kathryn has slept, lied, and, twisted her way to get what she wants, and she always got away with it. the pretty rich girl always does in her world

Possible Connections

the pop culture savvy — it’d be cool to see someone sorta fangirl about her. good way or bad way, but just someone who has kind of actually Knows Her yknow ? do they love her mom who has been in a bunch of diff genre films but were gr9 ? do they hate her father but love his brands ? do they think she’s a crazy hottie or a business icon ? do they love her and stan all that she is and about ? come @ me, boiz n gals n nb palz

kathryn who now ? — opposite of the first one, basically. someone who rlly dk who she is. “ u look familiar but i cant put my finger on it ” typa shit thatd make kathryn go a lil bitch wtf but idk maybe they wanna know her and it strokes kathryn’s ego to talk abt the good shit abt herself or wtvr ? i aint sure but lets discuss 

lil’ devil — mayhaps someone who is sorta urging them to hop off the wagon ? sleep around again, manipulate people, flip off the press ? idk just smth !

savior complex personified — basically someone who thinks they can right all that’s wrong w her. romanticized her to the nth degree and just wants to love her woes away

Established Connections

step-brother, sebastian  valmont — tbd soon, but they a mess, wbk

( a lotta holes here im not ecstatic abt it but thnx for reading, ya sweets. again, this what i get for birthing twins. as always, i’m open to anything ! just drop an IM or hit dat like & ill slide in ur dmz w love & plots & rainbows x )

( also ! she’s supposed to be really popular, think kardashian-jenner goes thru britney’s 2007, so if you would be so kind as to have your muse play along and at least recognize her unless they rlly dont follow pop culture, i would be ur bitch. tysmily )

#shermerintro #km

[raspberryparker]

someday | one

college!au spidey x fem!reader

← previous | series masterlist | next → word count: 4,818 summary: peter is suffering and failing english. that’s it, that’s the plot. warnings: see masterlist (graphic-ish description of injuries) read it on ao3 add yourself to my taglist!

━━━━━━━━

   There was nothing Peter could do about the fact that his brain was literally decaying.

   Okay, not literally. He may have had a headache, but he was pretty sure that his brain wasn’t actually rotting. God, he could almost hear Professor Williams correcting him on the use of the word. How insufferable.

   But that was just more proof, further evidence to back up his (very poor) argument. He couldn’t even use words correctly; how could anyone expect him to pass English? There were so many more important things he could have been focusing on.

   Like the fact that that he had finally kind of gotten used to the head rush that came with sitting cross-legged on his ceiling for five hours. He’d been steadily increasing the time he spent up there aimlessly scrolling through his Twitter feed, trying to see how long he could last. It was his own personal experiment of sorts—Peter was a scientist, after all. He had hypothesized that he could only last about three hours at most. But to his surprise he’d managed to go a solid four and a half before he gave out and threw up all over the floor of his dorm, though not before falling into it. His room reeked of bleach and Windex for a week. And after days of hard work and the sheer power of his unrelenting stubbornness, he’d finally managed to go the full five and walk away from it with little more than a headache and seeing a few spots. He wasn’t sure what he could do with this information but he was more than ready to find out.

   Those were the kinds of things that occupied the space in Peter’s mind. That and an innumerable amount of calculus formulas and chemical compounds and on and on and on. If he just started writing all the information he stored in that little Parker brain of his, he’d fill an entire collection of encyclopedias without even trying. Now, with that in mind (feel free to groan at that awful joke), did it seem reasonable that he should pay any attention to try and compare two completely different plays from an era that should no longer concern anyone in this day and age on their employment of dramatic irony?

   If one were as sane as Peter—although he could almost guarantee his sanity was diminishing by the day—they would undoubtedly agree with him when he said absolutely not. But frankly, it wasn’t up to him.

   And so that was how Ned found him: cross-legged on the ceiling, with his back against the wall above his bed, his face as bright as a ripe tomato and with a worried expression that seemed to be carved in stone. But he had every right to freak out. He was failing English.

   “You know, that’s not gonna help.”

   Ned dropped his bag on the floor next to the spot on the carpet that was whiter than the rest, and then fell back onto Peter’s bed with a soft grunt, folding his arms under the pillow behind his head and gazing up at his best friend’s face about a foot above him.

   “Nothing helps,” Peter groaned, unfolding his legs and stretching them out along the ceiling, the rough surface catching softly on the denim. “You know, I’ve come to think that maybe ending it all might be my only option.”

   “Oh yeah, you could do that,” Ned mused, feigning deep thought. “But then who’d take over for the one and only web-slinger?”

   “God, I hate it when you have a point.”

   As if he actually considered it, even for a second. If there was anything more unbearable to Peter than trying to write about anything even remotely related to his English course, it was the thought of not being around to be the friendly neighbourhood super hero he’d promised to be. He had a city to protect. But it was also a long running joke between them that Peter would one day swing up high over the streets of New York and then neglect to catch himself on the way down. He couldn’t remember when it started.

   Peter stood then, stepping a few paces to his left in order to drop off the ceiling without landing on Ned, and with a quick flip he was on the proper side of the world where the normal people were. His head throbbed, all the warmth that had gathered there beginning to flow back down to where it was supposed to be and the pressure behind his eyes subsiding. He glanced at Ned, who had closed his eyes and looked rather peaceful on Peter’s unmade, messy sheets.

   “So have you thought about what you’re actually gonna do?” he questioned.

   Peter sighed. “Nothing. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

   Ned sat up then, looking at him incredulously as if he’d just told him that there were vines sprouting from his ears. “Dude, you gotta do something.”

   “Says who?”

   “Says the school. You know English is mandatory, right? They won’t let you enroll next semester if you don’t pass.”

   “So I’ve been told.”

   Peter peeked at the clock on the small desk across the room, and though it was almost completely obscured by loose papers and notebooks that he never thought to put away, he still saw the bright green block numbers displaying the time. 4:43 PM. Nearly time to go.

   As he rummaged through his school bag looking for the new prototype webbing cartridges he’d designed, he felt Ned’s gaze on him from the way the hairs at the base of his neck stood on end. The feeling that Ned wanted to say something but couldn’t bring himself to was making the air around Peter palpable. He felt the tension on his skin, eyes nearly watering at the way it stung the inside of his nostrils and he detested the way it made his mouth feel like it was stuffed with cotton balls. Though his heightened senses saved him from getting killed on a nearly daily basis, they always seemed to act up at really, really inopportune moments. Such as this one.

   He felt Ned’s words before he heard them.

   “Do you need help?”

   Peter frowned, his brows coming together. “What, like a tutor?”

   “Yeah, or something like that,” Ned replied. “I’m asking because I know someone, you know, if you ever manage to swallow your pride and accept the fact that you can’t get out of this by yourself.”

   “Ouch.”

   “I believe this is what the kids call ‘tough love’.”

   Ned looked at him for a long time. Now that he was right side up it was easy to pinpoint all the warning signs that there was something terribly wrong. The bags under Peter’s eyes had always been there; those dark crescent moons etched into the creases there by many nights spent swinging through the streets of the bustling city, stopping crime whenever it had the audacity to crop up, had become a permanent feature on his face. But there was something else, something far more concerning in the way his shoulders stayed perpetually close to his ears, an undeniable tension tugging his entire frame upward as if he was being pulled up by a tight string.

   And when he turned to face Ned once more, the crease between his brows that had been there since he’d been sitting on the ceiling was still present, if not more prominent. He was only nineteen, but Peter was going to end up with wrinkles soon if he didn’t stop frowning all the damn time.

   “I’m worried about you.”

   His expression softened, his features relaxing at his friend’s words. “I know.”

   “You look like shit,” Ned continued, though his tone held the same care.

   “I know.”

   “You’re so frustrating.”

  Peter smiled, plucking the mask of his suit off his desk and flipping it so it was facing the right way again, hiding the circuits and wires that lined nearly the entirety of the fabric. He brushed his arm across the desk, clearing space and knocking papers, books, pencils, rolls of solder and even a sock to the floor in the process. If looking at him wasn’t proof enough that something had been troubling him, then one only needed to step into the catastrophe that was his dorm. But to be fair, did anyone keep their dorm sparkling? He didn’t think so. He fished the red and blue suit out of the top right corner of his small closet and smoothed it over the area he’d cleared of clutter. Ned watched as he carefully slipped the cartridges into their holders at the hip.

   “I’m serious though,” he pressed on, not missing the way Peter’s ears twitched in annoyance. “I’ve got a friend who could help you.”

   “I barely have money to buy food, Ned,” Peter sighed. “I seriously doubt I’d be able to afford a tutor.”

   “She owes me a favour anyway. She wouldn’t make you pay.”

   He turned back to face Ned, eyebrows raised. “What makes you think she’d even be willing to help me?”

   “Oh, please.” With a roll of his eyes, Ned reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone, scrolling through what Peter could only assume was his contact list. “Would I even be friends with someone that cold hearted?”

   “I don’t know, last time I checked we were still friends with MJ.”

  “She’d punch you if she heard that.”

   “Countin’ on it.”

   He held up the suit by the shoulders then, the baggy material looking drab and uninteresting and frankly kind of ridiculous. Throwing it on the bed at Ned’s feet, he tugged the hem of his ESU hoodie up and over his head, his t-shirt and pants coming off shortly after. He discarded the clothes on his floor with little regard as to where they ended up. Ned moved around him as Peter tugged on the loose suit. He set up his laptop on the desk and pulled a textbook out of his backpack. This part of their routine was easy, comfortable even. It had integrated itself into their lives just as easily as everything else did.

   Peter tapped the spider emblem on his chest, sucking in a quick breath as the material of the suit formed to his body and hugged his limbs. He turned to grab the mask but found Ned already holding it out to him, a worried expression on his face.

   He took it carefully. “Thanks.”

   Ned only nodded, swivelling around in Peter’s desk chair and opening up the textbook he’d placed next to the laptop. Something was off and it was making Peter’s skin crawl more than usual. He looked carefully at the back of Ned’s head, his words only being held back by his teeth and his tight jaw. If he opened his mouth, there would be no stopping. But what the hell, right? Ned was his best friend.

   “Give her a call,” he said finally, and Ned turned to him with a smile. “If you think it’ll help, I don’t see why I shouldn’t try.”

   “I hope you know I’m doing this for your own good,” he grinned, pulling his phone out again and looking for her contact.

   “Yeah.”

   Peter would always admire just how much his best friend had matured since sophomore year. Sure he still geeked out over Star Wars and comic books (but then again, so did Peter) but there was no doubt in his mind that Ned had simply… grown. As person, as a best friend, as his guy in the chair; Ned went from nervously helping Peter with whatever ridiculous idea he’d had that week to either fully supporting him or calling him a fucking idiot when he was being one. Ned was the one person he could always count on to be there for him.

   “Hey,” he called, his foot on the windowsill and hand gripping the frame, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. “You’re here if I need you, right?”

   Ned smiled, tucking his earbuds in and firing up the laptop. “Yeah, always.”

   Peter grinned back, slipping on the mask and throwing up a peace sign before he jumped out the window of his dorm. Luckily, his dorm only faced an alley between the residences and no one was around to see him crawling up the side of the brick.

   When he reached the rooftop, he sat for a moment admiring the autumn sunset, the warm orange hues washing the city with vibrant yet calm energy. Though he knew that this was but a mirage, and New York was nothing if not a complete disaster, he couldn’t help but think of a city at peace. Maybe one day he’d accomplish it, and hang up the webs one last time. But he doubted it’d come any time soon.

   “Pete?”

   “Yeah?”

   Ned’s voice was soft through the comm system, and Peter could almost hear the frown on his face. “Be careful, yeah?”

   Peter grinned, his heads up display focusing and zooming in on a group of men standing near the edge of Washing Square Park, a scared looking girl at their feet and trying desperately to back away on her hands. Why were they always stupid enough to assault someone in broad daylight in the middle of a park? They were almost begging for a beating.

   He webbed his backpack to a wall in the alleyway below him, then shot a web at the next roof over and pulled himself forward, landing gracefully on the balls of his feet and using the momentum to launch himself into the air. His head buzzed with the rush of air whizzing past his ears. He flipped once, twice, then landed in a crouch in front of the girl, fingertips on the ground with one arm extended to the side to help his balance, shielding her from the attackers. He could’ve sworn they could see his smirk through the mask, because their faces paled comically.

   “Always am.”

━━━━━━━━

   “Hello?”

   “Listen, you know that favour you owe me? Yeah, I’d like to cash that in now.”

   “Oh I’m great, Ned, thanks for asking. How are you?”

   “Y/N….” Ned whined, dragging out the last syllable. “It’s important.”

   Y/N laughed, switching her cell phone from her right ear to her left, and pressing it in place with her shoulder as she poured herself a cup of coffee. She finally felt that she had room to breathe now that midterms were over and she had the weekend off from work. The library staff room was warm and cozy despite the chilly November weather, so all she really wanted to do was sit down on the couch with one of the new fiction arrivals that she’d unpacked that afternoon for a good little while, but she’d been interrupted when her phone rang.

   The strong yet comfortable smell of bitter black coffee filled the small room, and she watched as the cream she poured into her mug swirled and mixed with the dark liquid. “Alright, alright. What’s up?”

   She was so positive of the fact that Ned was beaming that she would have bet everything she had on it, and when he spoke she could see his silly smile in her mind’s eye.  

   “Okay, so, you remember Peter, right?” Ned asked, and Y/N frowned as she opened the fridge door to put the cream back.

   “Haven’t met him but you’ve told me about him,” she said. “Childhood best friend or something, right?”

   “The one and only. Anyway he’s kind of in a tight spot right now.”

   “How so?”

   “He’s failing English.”

   Y/N smiled knowingly then, settling down on the rather ugly but still surprisingly soft beige couch in the centre of the room, the bright blue mug in her hands warming her to the bone. She knew instantly what the phone call was about and what Ned was going to ask of her, yet she feigned ignorance. Why? For her own amusement, she supposed. 

   “And you called me because…?”

   “You’ve been talking about wanting to tutor people on the side… right? But I figured you might want to test how comfortable you are doing it before you start charging people.”

   “And you’re suggesting that Peter would be my guinea pig?”

   “...Yes, in a way.”

   “Is he okay with that?” she asked, setting her phone down on the small foot table in front of her and putting the phone on speaker. She was all alone in the staff room, and there were only a handful of students and two other staff members in the building at the moment so she wouldn’t need to worry about disturbing anyone. That, and her neck was starting to ache.

   Ned’s sigh confirmed her suspicions, that he had somehow convinced Peter into agreeing to being tutored even though he didn’t want to. She wasn’t sure why, but Y/N felt her stomach tug at the thought. But that was ridiculous—she didn’t even know the kid.

   “I kinda had to beg him,” he admitted rather sheepishly. “He’s just… so stubborn and it- it’s infuriating. They’re not gonna let him back next semester if he doesn’t pass this time because he failed both times last year but honestly, I feel like he doesn’t even care.”

   “Hmm.” Y/N knew the type of person Peter was just from the little information Ned had just shared with her. He was headstrong and stubborn, but only made time for things he enjoyed and had genuine interest in, which evidently did not include English. “What’s he studying right now?”

   “Double major in Chemistry, and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.”

   “Jesus. That gave me a headache.”

   “I know, gross, right? I always told him he should’ve done Com-Sci like me, and maybe he’d be less stressed, but he never listens to me. He’s actually the smartest person I know when he wants to be, but when he doesn’t…”

   “Yeah, I get it,” she sighed. “Well, I’m free all weekend if he wants to meet up at the library. I was gonna stay far away from this place since I have a few days off, but I’m afraid I can’t abandon my books for too long anyway.”

   “You have no idea how much this means to us, Y/N,” Ned sighed. “Thank you.”

   “Yeah, yeah,” she grinned, mostly to herself though since no one could see her. “I feel like this is more important to you than it is to him, though.”

   “That makes two of us. Hey, can I give him your number?”

   “Sure, go ahead. Tell him to text me, yeah?”

   “He will. And if he doesn’t, I’ll make him.”

   Y/N giggled at that, sipping on her coffee and relishing in the warmth that slid down her throat. She dreaded leaving the library and stepping into the cold autumn air. She wanted to stay holed up on that couch forever. “Alright, dude, I gotta go. I’ll never leave if I stay here any longer and I still have to read a couple chapters of a new book tonight.”

   “Yeah, for sure. I’ll see you around this week?”

   “My door’s always open for you,” she smiled, knowing that Ned’s dorm room was only a few floors below hers and he’d often pop by to visit her while she studied. “See ya.”

   “Bye, my guy.”

   Y/N wondered if everyone felt that odd silence after hanging up a phone call, that lingering stillness that felt a little too quiet, especially when she was alone. It made the skin of her arms prickle with goosebumps and she shivered, putting her things back into her backpack and tugging it onto her shoulder. Quickly knocking back the rest of her coffee, she grabbed her scarf off the hook on the wall and laid it lazily around her neck once, still too warm inside the building to put it on properly.

   As she stepped out of the staff room, the warm atmosphere of the library engulfed her once more and she smiled as she stepped toward the main desk. Carol, her boss and the school’s head librarian, was typing away at the computer and busy signing out a laptop to a student. Y/N slid behind the desk, grabbing a copy of the new book she wanted to read and began to sign it out to herself on one of the unoccupied desktops as Carol thanked the student and let him know that he needed to bring the laptop back by the following evening. When she was done, she glanced at Y/N with a smile.

   “Oh, tell me how that one is,” she said when she saw the book. “It caught my eye but I’m not sure if I’ll have time to read it. If it’s a worthwhile read, however, I’ll make time.”

   “Will do.”

   Carol was a kind woman, who looked so stereotypically like a librarian it almost made Y/N laugh when they’d met. Her greying auburn hair was always tied into a tight knot on her head, and her wire-framed glasses were always slipping too far down her nose. She wore cardigans and capris pants almost everyday, and Y/N was pretty sure she only owned one pair of beige shoes. But she was caring and sweet, never shushing anyone when they laughed too loudly or if they swore when they dropped a particularly heavy encyclopedia on their foot. She was one of the main reasons Y/N liked her job so much and never said no when Carol asked her to come in a little bit early or stay a little while longer. She was practically her second mother, and the library was her home away from home.

   “I’ll see you on Monday, dear?” Carol asked as Y/N picked up her shoulder bag.

   “No, actually,” she grinned. “I’ll see you this weekend.”

   “Oh?”

   “Yeah.” She looked at her Converse clad feet and the fraying bottom of her pant legs, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m tutoring a friend of a friend as a favour. He’s failing English and, you know me- I have an obligation to make everyone enjoy literature.”

   “You and I both,” Carol smiled, the crinkles on the outside corners of her eyes folding and making her look like a sweet grandmother (she totally was sweet, though a grandmother only to her cat’s kittens, perhaps). “I do hope you go out and enjoy yourself this weekend, though. Every time I see you, you have your nose stuck in a book. And you know I do encourage that but you should really stretch your legs, go out and have some fun.”

   “I find reading very fun,” Y/N smiled, tucking the book into her bag.

   “Oh, I’m well aware.”

   She turned, walking backwards toward the library doors so she could wave to Carol. “See you soon then!”

   “I’ll be here, as always,” Carol grinned.

   It was dark when she stepped out of the building, the cold air hitting her like a wall and chilling her to her very core. She hugged her school hoodie around herself, tugging her scarf tighter and tucking it into the collar. The only downfall of studying at Empire State was that since the campus was in the centre of Greenwich, it was spread out over quite a few blocks. It would be a fifteen minute walk back to her dorm building, even if she cut through the park. So Y/N tucked in her earbuds and set off, stuffing her hands into the soft pocket of her hoodie and trying to keep as warm as possible.

   By the time she arrived to her building on 7th Avenue, her fingers were numb as she held the keycard over the sensor. She was sure her nose looked like a cherry tomato with how cold it’d gotten on the walk. Making a mental note to buy herself a pair of mittens for the upcoming winter, she stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the sixth floor. She estimated it to be a little past 10 PM, considering her shift ended at 9:30 and she’d spent some time talking to both Ned and Carol before she left. But luckily, that meant there would be nobody in the common room.

   Setting her bag down on the couch in her floor’s common lounge area, she took out the lunch she’d forgotten to eat and sat down with her book resting on her knees and her sandwich in her lap.

   She’d spent so many nights this way, it almost became routine for her now. She nestled into her usual corner, facing the glass walls that allowed her to see out into the hallway and took a bite of her food as she turned to chapter one. She yawned, already used to feeling tired after work and figuring that a good book would help her relax.

   And relax she did.

   Y/N was unsure just how much time had passed when she woke with a start, her book clattering to the ground next to her with the movement of her body.

   “Shit,” she muttered, picking it up and making sure that no pages had bent when it hit the ground. She glanced at the clock on the wall. 4:07 AM. God, had she really been there for that long? There was a kink in her neck where it had lolled back in her sleep, and she rubbed it as she took in her surroundings. It seemed like no one had been in the room since she’d arrived.  

   It wasn’t until she looked up, however, that she really startled.

   There, in the hallway on the other side of the glass, frozen like a deer caught in headlights, stood a boy who looked like he’d been beaten within an inch of his life.

   Y/N’s breath caught in her throat as they gazed at each other, both equally shocked. It was then that she realized that it was the sound of him almost falling flat on his face, but catching himself against a wall with a sharp, pained shout before he landed that woke her up. He was still gripping the wall, knuckles white with the sheer force of his grasp, his other arm clutched around his ribs. Neither of them expected the other to be there.

   He looked like he’d been hit by a bus. Or maybe hit by a bus, but then the bus turned around and drove over him another three or four times for good measure. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around and under it beaten blue and purple, and yellowing at the edges. The blood from his crooked nose dripped onto his mouth and chin, down his neck and staining the collar of his t-shirt, which had some ridiculous math pun on it that Y/N would have rolled her eyes at if she hadn’t been so shocked by the state of him. His arms were littered with what looked like bruises in the form of fingers, as if someone had grabbed him and thrown him around. There were cuts and bruises all over the rest of his face, and his short brown hair stuck up at an odd angle as if he’d just taken off a beanie. He wore a backpack that looked like it was one throw to the ground away from ripping at the seams and, for whatever reason, he wasn’t wearing shoes.

   They both sat in silence until he looked away, his shocked eyes then taking on a droopy, tired expression as he limped down the hall, his hand still supporting almost the entire weight of his body against the wall. His bare feet dragged against the hall floor, leaving dirt and blood behind on the linoleum. Y/N choked on her breath as she exhaled, not having noticed that she’d even been holding it.

   What the fuck? What the fuck?

   She scrambled to her feet, the book now long forgotten as it fell to the floor once again, and she fumbled with the doorknob as it slipped in her sweaty palms. When she finally got the door open, she stared down the hallway in the direction he’d gone, but she was met with nothing but an empty corridor.

   Where could he possibly have gone that fast?

   She stepped carefully and quietly, making sure to keep her footfalls as light as possible, as she walked in the direction she’d seen him go. She passed each door, looking for any sign that he might have been there, when finally she stopped in front of one with blood on the silver handle. Glancing up at the name tag that adorned every door, Y/N swallowed the dry lump in her throat and her eyes widened as she took in the name.

   Peter P.

   Oh dear God. What the hell did she just herself into?

━━━━━━━━

A/N: i’m so sorry but this is going to be the slowest slow burn in the history of slow burns, maybe ever. hope ya’ll are into pain. 

ALSO i spell everything the canadian way, ya know, with ou’s and shit... if that bothers you then whoOps sorry

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tags: @psychedelicmagnum @jazmins-main-hoe

message me to be added to a taglist or add yourself (updates coming steadily through november) or send an ask/comment to give me some feedback! x

#ohoho it's finally here hope u enjoyyyyy #spiderman #spider man #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #peter parker x reader #peter parker x you #spiderman x reader #marvel #marvel fic #mcu fanfic #spider-man fanfic #college au #college!au #marvel college au #spiderman fanfic #spiderman fanfiction #peter parker fanfic #peter parker fanfiction #tom holland #tom holland x reader #tom holland x you #reader insert #spiderman college au #spider man college au #spider man homecoming #spider man far from home #infinity war #peter parker fic

[theday]

anyways, ill say bye now... i hope ure well rested and have a good day!! (wait, i remember what i wanted to ask!! at least i think this is what i wanted to ask? anywys, do u know what u want to do now that ure finished w school? if u dont mind me asking, of course, i understand if u think its a bit personal!) ok, now im done, have a good day!! take care and stay hydrated!! (and now i really did send u a bunch of asks..)

omg i hope u dont mind but ill be answering the stuff from ur last ask here (the one where i… deleted everything) under cut bc itll be 2x longer now

so first !!!!! how i got into kpop!!! it was thanks to my good pal (@.briwoon) boxy! i follow her on twitter and despite her being a day6 stan twt i had her unmuted anyway bc.. after years of being an anime blog on tumblr and seeing all my anime mutuals slowly converting into kpop blogs one by one i was able to filter the kpop out of my brain?? smth like that since back then i wasnt into kpop and i didnt want to unfollow since im mutuals with most of them :-0 

another backstory - i was one of those people who never saw themselves getting into kpop? and i think the main reason was bc i thought liking kpop would make u seem lame?? due to the influence from people around me?? but as years went by and as my mutuals changed interests it stopped bothering me and that mindset kind of just? faded away bc who am i to call other people’s happiness bad?? but despite being okay with it i never really made the move to get into any groups lmao that was until i got tired of my interest at that time (seiyuu, japanese voice actors) and my interests would always. not last?? idk so maybe thats why i didnt want to get invested but it happened regardless 

anyway usually i wouldnt take notice of her rts but this . this beautiful man with orange hair and minion glasses caught my eye when i was scrolling through my timeline and i was like o worm? oh mu god? hes beautiful? so i slid into her dms and asked her whomst the beautiful man was and she sent me all their mvs after that from congratulations to i smile (the most recent mv at that time, late june) for me to watch :-D now at that time, from what little knowledge i had of kpop.. i understood that groups would be singing and dancing so i was prepared to see some sick moves or smth?? but then. i clicked on miss i smile and my wig flew off? bc… wtf.? they were playing instruments???? and they sounded good ??? so i was like oh my god? a band??????

before day6 i also had (have) a preference for bands and the way their music sounds so i was like?? ready to just. get on board yknow?? i watched how can i say and i saw the lanky noodle wearing glasses and i was like o fuck mu life? i caved and asked boxy for their names and other information and best decision of my life bc.. they really make me happy!!! after that like the day after ? myabe they did a vlive and i was like o shit? what do i do… so i downloaded the vapp and wowie i love it? its my second home…… i watched every vlive they had at that time and i thought that was a lot… (it isnt, compared to mx) and i was just rly content??

(ok i know u asked for kpop and not … day6 or other groups bc im gonna talk abt how i got into mx and astro too bc…… how can i Not.. u can skip this part tho i just wanna ramble abt my loves? ill tell u when u can continue)

that was peak happiness for me at that time.. until… boxy started talking about monsta x in our groupchat (with @.tokayhk) and she would just ramble abt this kihyun fella (who i vaguely knew bc my real life friend likes him and mx and i bought her his pc before along with the guilty clan part 2) so i was like hmm interesting… and honestly? i wasnt going to get into monsta x i really wasnt planning on asking her abt them (since i was scared id lose interest in day6 right after) but then.. she started linking videos and i .. my resolve crumbled down as i heard monsta x yelling and … this beautiful cover (which boxy sent to show us how powerful kihyuns vocals are but i was 2 focused on mister aka minhyukku) and she told us how funny these monsta men are and i was like o h no…………….. eventually one day in late august i asked her to tell me more about these monstas…… aftert that i watched every mxray episode (starting from season 2 bc i dont know 1 comes before 2) and even though i didnt know anyone who was on screen except jooheon i found it really funny and?? it made me laugh so much i love mx?? ya… boxys kind of like my guardian angel?? shes really the reason im living tbh… introducing me to all these lovely people?? thank u miss boxy i love u

now. for the astrosus….. they were a bit different.. because i didnt have boxys help and they were the first group i took interest in solely bymyself so i knew i was in for a wild ride (at first, i couldnt even differentiate brian from sungjin in day6 lmao) after stanning monsta x and day6 i became more?? open to kpop and i started watching unhelpful guides on youtube bc . they were funnie and idk its nice??/ and i stumbled upon the astro one (which wasnt that funny but more helpful than anythng) and i was like. oh worm? the cicada group… bc i watched a short clip of them catching that stupid cicada in their office as it appeared on my tl one day so i clicked on the video ..and after watching that it led me to another video of astro being extra for 6 minutes and those six minutes/????? best six minutes of my life because theyre so fnny and they made me laugh a lot? (combined with the editing from op) so bc they were funnie i decided to look them up and read their profiles/??? i watched their nimdle video and only knew mj bc his tag was the two letters m and j lol but it really made me bust both of my lungs i just?? laughed A Lot 

im not sure how i managed to put name to face so quickly but it mightve been bc after the nimdle videos i watched every ddoca and astro play as well as their vlives available bc..  i just inhale the content at godspeed?? 

for mx and astro i was drawn in by their personalities before their music because they were on more variety shows and had more chances to show dorky they all are which made it way quicker for me to fall for the two groups??? for day6 its a bit sad but the weekly scheduled vlives arent enough for me to tell what kind of people they are (although those r still hilarious) i just wish they would go on more variety shows?? its understandable if they themselves dont want to be on any shows though!!! i love all 3 groups with all my heart :-D 

ok if u skipped u can start from here ill be answering the questions now lmao

FIRSTof all,,,,, youre learning how to drive?? thats so cool >:-0 we’re not allowed to learn until we’re like...?? 18?? or 21 idk but not so Soon :-( and its cute u think abt me (or of what to say) but pleaseth stay safe... i hope ur driving lessons go smoothly until u end theM!!! hopefully youll be able to get ur licence :-D 

aNDD!!! the thought of drinking warm tea when its cold outside.. is so ?? nice to think about hecc u better drink that tEA and enjoy it !!!! stay warm and comfy miss RM ..... and it even snows there????? thats so cool tbh ?? (i love snow but maybe thats bc it doesnt snow here so i dont know the tru evil of snow but like.... its so.... white and fluffy??) i would ask u 2 take pics and show me but alas...... the time is not right :-( do u know when we’re allowed to expose ourselves?? i forgot rip... but its sometime next month right im excited???? since its near my birthday !!!!! 

ok now to answer this ask no i actually have no clue what i want to be after i finish school?? yikEs but last year i (jokingly) said i wanted to be a farmer??? idk if i might actually do that probably not i guess im just freestyling (going with the flow) for now we’ll see where life takes me 

and like i said u can ask me anything !!! im fine with it :-) alsooooo please dont ever feel bad about sending too many asks bc its a lovely thing to wake up to and i just?? get rly happy when i see all the asks in my activity :-D!!  

#asks #rachel maria #oohh my this got really long #its already the next day so ill quickly answer the nxt set

[stxrryleah]

MUN REPORT

Basics

Name/Nickname/Alias: Medea-Jade, but everyone calls me Mia. I will answer to MJ too but I prefer Mia.

Timezone: GMT/England

Gender/Pronouns: Female (bi) + she/her

Age: 18, but I’m 19 in January (scaRY)

Personal Introduction: Well, hello. I’m Mia, I’m from England, and I used to study performing arts: acting + dancing. At the moment I’m settling into a new job in fashion, so I’m actually doing a ridiculous amount of travelling (for example, on Monday I’m going to Milan for three weeks), but honestly, I love it??? So with my job, I’m going to be saving up money so that I can go to drama school because acting s my real passion, RPing has helped me so much with acting because acting is all about becoming someone else, creating their personality traits, backstory, and that’s exactly what I do for all my characters! 

Personality

Who is your favorite Greek/Roman God/Goddess?: Poseidon because I’ve always had a great love of the sea. 

If you had to meet any mythological God or being, who would you most like to meet?: Apollo, to ask him whether he is my dad on the sly. Too many things don’t add up (jk).

Favorite movie(s) and TV-show(s)? Sherlock, Supernatural, Doctor Who, Sense8, BoJack Horseman, Orphan Black

Favorite books?: PJO, Time Riders, Harry Potter, Shades of London, anything John Green

Favorite music?: I have a very eclectic taste in music. Right now on my Spotify, I have Sam Smith’s new album, Taylor Swift’s new album, Bastille’s Bad Blood, a playlist with Monster Rally and a worship music playlist.

Favorite color?(yes, ikr, important question): Dark purple/blue/green

What are your hobbies and what you enjoy doing besides RP here?: I play music a lot (the question “what do you play” is too big for this segment), or I do fitness stuff/write short plays/films.

Random fun fact(s): Coffee puts me to sleep.

Roleplay

What is/are your character(s)?: Leandra “Leah” Thomas (Nyx/Zoey Deutch), Phoenix “Phee” Saunders (Persephone/Colin Ford), and Guinevere “Guin” Fairchild (Eunomia/Lulu Antariksa)

Which of your characters do you most identify with (if any)?: I personally identify with all my characters for different reasns. Leah is a very relaxed person (which I can be sometimes), and she really believes in encouraging people to achieve their best. Phee I relate to because I completely get his motivation to want to inspire other people and make them happy. Guin, I relate to because I have a very strong sense of right and wrong and won’t stray from what I believe is either.

If you have multiple characters, which is the most fun to play? Which is the hardest to play?: This question is the hardest to answer. All of my characters are fun, and all of them are difficult. Leah is hard because she’s so chill all the time. In situations where I’d be freaking out, she doesn’t care, and she just has such a relaxed attitude all the time. Phee is difficult because he has his days where he has difficulties and doesn’t have the motivation to do anything because his brain is telling him otherwise. Guin is hard because she’s just gone through a massive trauma and is trying to work past it without talking to anyone about it, which is going to lead her nowhere.

How and why did you decide to join the RP?: The last RP I was in closed down unexpectedly, and it left an RP sized hole in my heart. I debated going into indie RP, but I thought “no, I need a group where I know I have people to talk to and plot with” because indie can be lonely af. 

What other kind of RP do you do?: I started off on Twitter almost 7 years ago, then made the move to Tumblr when I was 13. I mostly did indie, a few groups, but as I’ve aged, I prefer a group environment. I do have a 1x1 though. (here it is)

PJO Universe

(If you don’t think you’re familiar enough with Rick Riordan’s mythological universe in his books, you don’t need to answer all these!)

What books in Rick Riordan’s mythology series’ did you read (also including the short stories, encyclopedia-type books by Percy and the Egyptian and Norse stories?): I’ve read almost all the Percy Jackson books. At present I’m re-reading them. I got to House of Hades, but then school got to be too much.

What was your favorite (and why?): Lightning Thief and The Lost Hero are my favourites. I don’t know why specifically, but I guess I just love the beginning of all of these amazing tales. They set the series up so well, and I get chills reading.

Have you seen the PJO movies and what did you think of them?: I have seen Lightning Thief, but I haven’t seen the second one. I loved it to be honest, it’s why I picked up the books in the first place. I think it will always have a place in my heart for that reason. 

Who is your favorite canon character in the PJO mythology universe (and why?) Percy, because as strange as it may sound, I can relate to that kid a hell of a lot. He tries to mind his own business and ends up in trouble, and if that ain’t me I don’t know what is. 

Where do you think you’d live, CHB or New Rome/Camp Jupiter?:  CHB all the way. I don’t agree with certain aspects of Camp Jupiter, so therefore, I know I wouldn’t be happy there. (I always imagined that, knowing my luck, if I was a demigod, I would end up being a Roman demigod and hate every second of it.)

If you were born a demigod, who would your parent be based on your personality and who would you want it to be (if it’s not the same)?: Apollo. I always end up as first aider to my friends (it’s so bad I’m actually gonna take a first aid course), and just. Music. Yeah. 

What would ambrosia taste like for you?:  Fudge or ginger ale. 

#hbrp:task #hbrp:mun

[yenneferw]

Anonymous requested something between MJ and Peter

I still dunno how I feel about how well I did on this one but it’s the first time I’ve written MJ  and Peter x MJ so sjdlfjfd 

Peter didn’t know when, he didn’t know where along the way, but at some point he had stopped seeing Michelle as the quiet girl down at the end of the lunch table whose presence he didn’t realize how much he enjoyed until she was sick and the end of the lunch table was empty of her books and her occasional comments.

It had to be some time before she asked him to call her “MJ,” because he had to admit, there was something about knowing that she wanted him to consider her a friend—that she considered him a friend—that made him feel really good. Like, a different kind of good than what he felt about being friends with Ned. But a different kind of good than when Liz said she would go to homecoming with him, too.

He couldn’t pinpoint the moment, but it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that he didn’t want to wait as long to do something about it as he waited with Liz. She would definitely notice things easier than Liz did, and that would be awkward. Besides, waiting that long hadn’t worked out before; it had only resulted in his girlfriend’s dad being a supervillain. Not resulted, actually. But that happened.

Not long after he started really noticing this feeling, he knew that he should tell Ned about it. They were both hanging out at Peter’s house, the two of them on their phones and both leaned back next to each other on his bed. After a bit of scrolling through MJ’s Instagram—which really didn’t have near as much on it as Liz’s had (not that he was comparing, or checking, or something, but to quote MJ, he was just being observant)—he looked over at his friend.

“Do you want to know something?” he asked, feeling a bit like a middle schooler confessing his crush, but it didn’t matter because it was just Ned so he could do that.

“Obviously, especially if it’s the same kind of secret as ‘You’re Spider-Man.’” Ned sat up and looked down at Peter, who sighed and sat up after a moment as well.

“Well, sorry to disappoint, but it’s not quite a superhero reveal,” he told him. He paused for a second and scratched his head. “I think I kind of like MJ.”

“Maybe MJ is a superhero,” Ned mused.

Peter rolled his eyes at him. “Come on, be serious, please.”

“I already kind of knew about that,” Ned told him. “It’s obvious, to me at least.” He stared at him for a moment, and Ned must have known that this was in confusion and incredulity, because he continued: “I’ve been looking at memes for half an hour and I’m pretty sure you’ve just been going through her Twitter and Instagram the whole time.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean anything,” he said defensively, frowning down at his phone like it had wronged him, giving away what he was thinking like that. “She’s really funny on Twitter, and I like the pictures she takes on her Instagram.”

“Why are you getting defensive when you’ve already said you like her?”

Peter paused. He didn’t know the answer to that question.

“Whatever,” he said, shaking his head as if to brush off that moment. “Do you think she likes me?”

There was no hesitation. “Dude, yes,” Ned assured him, rolling his eyes a little bit. “She sat with you in detention.”

“To draw people in crisis,” Peter said, unsure if he really believed that she liked him.

“And you should have seen her face when you were at the dance with Liz.”

“Well, Liz was out of my league.”

Ned groaned. “Didn’t the spider, like, make your senses go crazy? You really couldn’t tell with how blind you’re being.”

Peter shot him a look, but he said, “Smooth,” anyway.

Ned grinned and nodded. “Yeah, I know. Anyway, you gotta tell her.”

He paused for a moment, but it was obvious that that was true. If both of them liked each other, there was no point in dancing around it, was there? Except dancing around it was safe and offered exactly zero embarrassment, as opposed to being rejected, which offered exactly a lot. Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe he could just keep on pretending like he had never had this conversation with Ned.

Except now that it was actually out there, he felt like it was real, and now he was going to be wondering every time she did something that seemed like maybe she liked him. And he was going to be all un-smooth about liking her now, and that definitely wouldn’t help anything.

Ned was right. He needed to just rip off the bandaid.

Except ripping off the bandaid hurt.

Crushes sucked.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay, but how do I do that?” he asked. It wouldn’t hurt to have a game plan, even if he didn’t go through with it.

Ned shrugged and leaned back on the bed again. Peter did the same, so they were laying side-by-side staring up at the bottom of the bunk bed above them. He was trying to picture some perfect scenario in his head, but every time he thought about what he would say to MJ, his mind went blank. Or it supplied him with a lame knock-knock joke or a science pun, and that wasn’t going to help him.

“Tell her you’re Spider-Man,” Ned suggested, looking over at him and nodding enthusiastically.

“I can’t tell her I’m Spider-Man, Ned.”

He huffed. “Well, you need to eventually. The groupchat will be so much more fun if she knows you’re Spider-Man, too.” Peter looked back at him. “I guess just be cool. MJ’s cool. She likes cool.”

That wasn’t really advice, but Peter didn’t know what advice he was going to get, anyway. But he thought he had a plan.

The next day at school, Peter went back and forth in his head if he should actually go through with it and talk to MJ about his feelings. In the morning, he decided that he would, but he would wait until the end of the day. By lunchtime, it was starting to feel like the end of the day was too close, and he would never be ready to tell her. By the last period, he was certain he couldn’t do it.

But they crossed paths going to their lockers as they always did at the last period of the day and she was smiling about something. It was the kind of smile that happened when someone was walking alone and thinking of an old joke, so they tried to stifle it. She looked really pretty. She always looked really pretty, but Peter thought her smiles, including her half-smiles, were the nicest smiles he’d ever seen. Even the ones that she smiled at him when she was messing with him.

So he built up his resolve and hurried to his locker, pushing a bit through the horde of people trying to get home or to their after-school activities. He shoved his books in his bag and breathed in deeply, staring into his locker for one more second before turning around with determination in his heart.

He walked to her locker, and thankfully she was still there, throwing a couple books in and then zipping up her backpack. And even more thankfully, there weren’t many people around. He had built his plan around the fact that her locker was in the cramped corner by the staircase, so no one really lingered back there like they did around the lockers closest to the exits.

Before she could turn and walk away from her locker, ruining the whole plan, he walked over and said, “Hey, MJ— oh fuck.”

He was on the ground.

He had meant to lean against the lockers nearest hers like guys did to their girlfriends in movies, knowing that she would think it was dorky. But if she liked him, she must have liked some of his dorkiness.

He hadn’t meant to fall on the ground. That was beyond the level of dorkiness he had meant to put into this.

She looked down at him as she slung her backpack over her shoulder, frowning a little bit. One of the people who was still at their locker when this happened looked down at him on the floor and put a hand over their mouth to hide the grin that was forming. Peter could hear them laughing as they walked away.

“What are you doing on the ground, Peter?” she asked.

“This is exactly where I meant to be,” he told her. He could feel how red his cheeks were from the warmth pooling around up there, and he was a bit too embarrassed to remember how to stand up. “I was planning this for hours.”

She stared at him for a long moment, like she was trying to make sense of just what the hell he was saying. If she had voiced her confusion, he would have assured her that he had no idea either. “Right… Do you need help up?”

“Uh, no. Maybe.” He stood up after remembering that normal conversations took place with both people standing up. Well, not always, he told himself. But when one was standing, normal conversations didn’t usually involve the other person on the ground. “So… what are you doing… here?”

His brain felt very distinctly like a keyboard smash. If he was supposed to be thinking logical thoughts, like Try not to ruin the situation further, then his brain would surely be surprised about that, because all that was happening up there was a very loud Fjklsdjflsjdffl.

“You’re acting weirder than usual,” MJ said after a moment. She started to walk out of the locker area, motioning him forward when he stayed in place. “What’s going on with you? You were acting weird all day, actually.”

“I… Well, I just wanted to ask if you want to hang out,” he said in a rush.

She looked over at him as they maneuvered through a group of people who had decided to stop in the middle of the hallway. “Aren’t we hanging out this weekend?”

“Yeah, but I mean— I mean that’s with Ned, and really we’re just gonna be playing video games while you read— I mean, not that that’s not great, but I mean—”

“I’m giving you one more ‘I mean’ to actually say what you mean,” she told him, the corner of her lips turning up in a small smile. He didn’t know if that meant she knew what he meant, or if she was entertained by all the times he said “I mean,” and he didn’t know if that mattered.

“I mean…” He trailed off. He didn’t actually know how to say what he meant. “Do you know what I mean?”

“That’s two,” she pointed out. She bumped into him a little bit, which brought a big smile to his face. “Do you want to go get something to eat tomorrow night?”

“Yes! That’s exactly what I mean.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re the worst. I’ll text you.”

Peter nodded as they walked out of school, about to part ways. “Okay, cool. That’s cool,” he said. The words coming out of his mouth weren’t really under his control, but she was smiling at him and he could feel how big the grin on his face was. “Okay, see you. Or— talk to you later… I mean.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Shut the fuck up. Talk to you later.”

The two of them went in their separate directions, and he smiled down at the ground as he walked away. All he could think about was her pretty smile and where they should go tomorrow night. His heart was fluttering in his chest still from that whole… thing, and he had no idea how he was going to focus on anything with the way it made him feel.

But all in all, he thought that that went pretty well.

#my writing #sjdfljd i tried #petermj #peter x mj #peter parker #michelle jones #smhc #smh #sm:hc #sm:h #spider-man: homecoming #spider-man #spiderman #mj #spideychelle #what the fuck is the ship name here i'm so confused so i just covered all the bases #mine

[renaroo]

My Perspective on This Idiocy

I have a hate-fascination with Nick Spencer. I’ve read his comic Bedlam and thought it was just about the best comic he was capable of writing because creator-owned Image publications tend to be quite a bit of insight into the creator. 

Now if you don’t know about Bedlam it’s a comic where a maniacal, Joker-esque villain known as Madder Red terrorized a city until he seemingly died in a final fight with his heroic adversary. In truth he was captured by some mysterious organization that “reformed” him through questionable means. And suddenly he is working along with the police force to try and stop other villainous maniacs while constantly being on edge with whether or not his reform actually worked. 

An inherently evil man, secretly reformed, infiltrating the side of justice he once worked against, in order to maintain law and order. The sort of thing which had it happened with a Red Skull or a Joker people would (rightfully) lost their shit because the moral event horizons for the characters are so far removed from the concept of reformation in reality we wouldn’t be able to accept it. 

I read Bedlam at the time and was fascinated by a dark inversion of what the only “end point” for undeniable evil in a comic book world could be, but I was also in my very light, very short “dark and gritty” phase of being an 18 year old life long comic reader. 

What I’m getting at is that since then I care a lot more about the motivations of why people choose to write such stories and frame them the way they do than I did when I was younger. 

My next hate-fascination with Nick Spencer wasn’t other indie titles like Morning Glories (which I missed the boat on) or his run on Ant-Man (which I skipped because I haven’t had a huge relationship with the character), but with his involvement with the “Superior Spider-Man” storyline Dan Slott was penning, Spencer writing Superior Foes of Spider-Man. If you don’t remember, that was a storyline where Doc Ock was dying so he switched brains with Peter Parker and left Parker to die in his old body but decided to be a pompous asshole version of Spider-Man and outdo his predecessor culminating in an issue where he dates Mary Jane briefly so that Slott could continue to fuck with MJ fans and have an issue where the cover had MJ in her underwear. Classy. 

Spencer obviously didn’t have a lot to do with this main storyline (though the current parallels tells me a lot about the values Marvel puts in maintaining the concept of what superheroes even are), but he wrote the ancillary book that was allotted by a lot of fans and critics that turned the Sinister Six into a Suicide Squad/Secret Six-like morally questionable-to-bankrupt protagonists whose exploits you come to hate yourself for cheering on as gleefully as you do, especially in the face of inevitable defeat.

Humanizing and giving voice to the side of the people comics have traditionally used as hatable enemies easy to root against. 

The next bout of hate-fascination I’ve had is with this tire fire that has been his run with Captain America and what we’ve seen as the moral collapsing of the entirety of the Marvel Universe. A world where the Nazis were supposed to win WWII and the Allies decided that the MU as we’ve known it, as crafted by Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and many others (mostly Jewish creators), was actually a FALSE reality crafted by the Allies after-the-fact where they made sure to defeat Hitler, but allowed the Holocaust to happen. A fact that REALLY can’t be overlooked considering what a vital role it plays in Magneto’s life and his descendants’ lives, not to mention the parallels of the struggles of the X-Men in general. 

You can follow the entirety of what has been the Spencer disaster in great articles like this Polygon summary and the same author’s rundown of yesterday’s issue.

But, apparently, people still don’t get it because everything’s cyclical and comics will return to normal by the end of the summer yatta yatta let’s ignore that three months ago there were actual Neo-Nazis including Tila Tequila holding a party in DC where leaked footage shows hate speeches and actual Nazi saluting to “Hail Trump” and the fact that a high level Marvel executive is now a paid member of the Trump White House that also has Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller. 

Let’s instead look at what this says about Nick Spencer as a writer. The man is a professed Liberal, a huge Hillary supporter apparently during her campaign, and also a man baby who takes offense to everything on Twitter Dan Slott-style, and apparently has an inability to reflect upon his own body of work and see the trends that are glaringly obvious to me just through this short overview. 

Nick Spencer is a white, male neo-Liberal suffering from a morbid fascination with the macabre fascism and atrocities of reality, who is just being ‘real’ and ‘edgy’ by making drawn out portrayals of these ideologies, and saying “implications and moral grandstanding be damned” because (for reasons that he pretends to be oblivious to) this sort of villainous humanizing and morality postulating world where “Social Justice” terms can be hurled by careless, strawmen “actual bad guys” and Black characters who suffer racist abuses in- and out-of-universe apologize to their white friend  sells to the white, male 18-35 demographic. 

Is Nick Spencer a neo-Nazi or support the real world fascism he uses in his stories? I don’t know, I don’t really care. 

But I know why he’s using it to sell comics, and I find that fact unforgivable both for him and for Marvel. And for him to act like he’s being attacked for “simply writing good, controversial stories” while he and his buddies claim that the REAL PROBLEMS at Marvel right now are diversity and that damn DC putting out content people are gravitating toward instead of shitty comics where Captain America and the whole world are actually Nazis the whole time, shows me where convictions of his sort really lie. 

You can stamp your “I’m With Her” stickers all over your forehead and lambast Trump tweets all day, Nick Spencer, but like most white, male neo-Liberals I have met in my life it doesn’t really make a difference because your nose is still stuck up the assholes of the people you actually relate to because other communities you “champion” for are harder to understand and more complex to portray the humanizing elements of compared to moral quanderies of “punching that guy who kinda looks like me and had a life like mine just because he has a stupid haircut and talks about the symbolism of Peppe the Frog while proclaiming the superiority of the White Race makes us just as bad as Hitler, guys”. 

Yeah, it’s easier. Just like it’s easier to say you’re pro-Diversity, pro-Women, pro-LGBTQA+, pro-Progressive ideals to avoid being called out or questioned, but much harder to write with a conscience perspective for those groups while playing to your actual target audience. 

So my hate-fascination with Nick Spencer has come full circle. He’s ironically hit his own moral event horizon. And he’ll possibly make himself and Marvel lots of money while doing so. But it won’t be from the demographics that are actually growing in America and worldwide. It’ll be from the one that’s been shrinking for 20 years now and, historically, already lost this war once. 

Not that Nick Spencer’s current Nazi fever dream likes to admit that they actually lost it. 

I’m going to declare my hate-fascination with Spencer over. Not because I think his career is over, not because I don’t think he’ll make some other big waves with some other stupidity (probably on twitter) later. But because he’s finally reached the apex of this little journey in his writing career. And it’s boringly average white fanboy fare in the big picture of comics. 

Characters and comics are immortal, writers and artists are temporary, but the shame of this douchebaggery is hopefully going to be immortal. 

It will be for as long as I’m blogging, at least. 

#long post #Rants of Unusual Size #opinions opinions opinions #Nick Spencer #Marvel critical #nazism tw

[dear-saxifrage]

superlatives of 2017.

i’ve been lucidly alive for too long to not have a running list of my annual fuck-ups, successes, favorites, random moments, memories, and other written memorabilia. my list will include: favorite songs, most underrated songs, most significant musical breakthrough, best jam session, best workout, worst workout. what i have written, my reflections on my work, whatever. it is a working list and it’ll change each year from here on out, but will deliver the same message: my year.

a few notes:

-using Twitter as an online receptacle for my incessant bitching has doubled as an excellent cybernetic way for me to keep track of what i think, do, feel, and exist

-i don’t use capitalization because it’s irritating. but it probably looks like i don’t use capitalization because it’s the sexy new tech writing trend. (shudder).

notes are done.

let’s start quantifying.

using Twitter more consistently

while i have had an account for a while, i never took to it. but my writer friends told me that having a place to vent and to spin ideas is a great space. plus, so much of literary searching is done through twitter. now, all to do is to create a professional twitter and to not tweet seven-word-cuss-outs on it.

the middle of 2016 was hectic as fuck. my tweets are sporadic, focused on form and style. they’re so obviously buttressed by my then-cold and then-hardened interiority. 

poetry

i tried my hand at poetry toward the start of 2017, which i think is indicative of the sleeping beast inside of me that would burst come january 2017. my ezra pound-inspired poetry was actually pretty good. i should take it up again! :) my favorite:

“a pound, a knot. hands at the bakery. lacquered pots greet us as we enter.”

saying goodbye: farewell to the crybaby bitch

probably the most obvious change in what i can see, from my tweets, is my change in priorities. it used to be so focused on trauma: how i am amazed at the now because of the past’s scratchy nails. well, i most distinctly see that i have moved on. yes, i ontologized what happened to me. i theorized, understood, felt, chewed through, and really felt it. then? then i fucking moved on. i did the things to help my brain re-balance itself. it’s chemicals, not you. congrats on being a big girl, sydney.

piedmont house

obviously, the most impacting thing that happened in 2017. in 2017, i moved into the most beautiful house in berkeley i’ve ever seen! in 2017, i wired 2k to a chick i barely knew in between sets at the gym because i was desperate to leave cj’s house. i was resigned to having to live with her, in that pathetic ramshackle on fulton and parker, and just dealing with the ground and a blow-up mattress and dilapidated bathroom floors. but nope -- carly needed a roommate on facebook. she was always the girl from my utopian anthropology class, with whom i did an internship with, but then it all changed. i flew to san francisco, and my rugby friends delivered: ten minutes in berkeley, and a huge denali pulls up to my place. “let’s go.” i was moved in less than four hours, all thanks to the good people who moved my furniture, belongings, (my life), from one house to another house, another room with four walls and a beautiful lofted ceiling, a skylight. 

i ordered a new bed. a zinus memory foam mattress, queen size (or full?). i gave away my futon, left my couch and furry blanket at the old house, left it all, because i couldn’t stand it. i severed myself from all of my old friends, my alleged best friends from rugby. it was pretty lonely, but then god threw down a group of fucking weirdos to me, and i’ve established some of the most secure, loving, and pure friendships i’ve ever experienced.

i know i talk about them a lot, but it’s because i am still reeling. i can’t believe they exist. i can’t believe any of them are real. i always tweet about the viola guy, well it’s because i kinda love him, and i always tweet about our random adventures together, all of us, and it’s because i absolutely love them all.

so that was it, the piedmont boys. boys meaning girls and boys; boys meaning a group of meme-tastic misfits. 

on my last night before leaving for phoenix -- i drove out here, 13 fucking hours through the pitch black night in the empty desert of coachella, indio, blythe, goodyear, stars twinkling gratuitously -- i got hammered at karaoke with my boalt law coworkers. it was fun, certainly. i sang country roads and had yet another cathartic emotional episode because that’s how i am. anyway, i came home, and i was scared shitless because i was home alone, so i called my friend lance -- a piedmont fellow -- and he came over. he just ate his dinner at the table while i showered, packed, got ready. then we talked for hours. talked and talked and talked. and he left me with the most touching thing i’ve ever been told: “you are like the glue between all of us. you have a remarkable ability to connect with other people, and i think you can be the one to show us that it doesn’t have to be hard to stay in contact. that we can live the rest of our lives with each other.”

i still haven’t told anyone about this conversation. it was too pure, too beautiful, for me to retell, i think. i never thought i’d be this person i am now, and for someone to think that i am in such a strong, charged way, absolutely broke my heart. so. cheers to the piedmont boys. thank you for the adventures. thank you for reopening me to the possibility of love and for letting me love you.

concerts

jesus h. christ. this was THE YEAR for concerts. who the fuck did i see? let me count.

-greenday

-panic at the disco

-venice’s baroque chamber group

-chicago symphony

-lorde

-john legend

-hans zimmer

-nobuo uematsu

-yoko shimomura

-tetsuya nomura

-foster the people

-vance joy

-weezer

-THE KILLERS

-cirque du soleil (does this count? lol)

as we can see, i make it a point to have fun. i work a lot and spend my money on tickets because why the fuck not. i have to say, HEARING BRENDON URIE SING A SOLO VERSION OF “BEHIND THE SEA” SAVED ME, and HEARING BRANDON FLOWERS SING “MR. BRIGHTSIDE” blew me away. i felt so grateful. AND, as one would expect, i’ve become an immensely better musician this past year. let’s see.

musicianship

it started with the viola guy and the guitar guys. we wanted to jam, so we did. and i’m not used to people being as competent as me, so it took me by surprise, to have to really use my brain and THINK. it was sexy. i started learning chord progressions, jazz logic, improv styles, how to fill up the space with easy-listening chords, how to pick a melody and play around it. 

piano has been good. it’s not as good as i’d like, but i can play 2/4 16th notes baroque-style without a problem, and i’m pretty proud of that. learning to transpose parallel minors and relative minors from major keys. it’s tough but inspiring: just think. just FOCUS. and you can do it. (can do anything).

singing. oh, jesus. singing this past year was fucking incredible. i had an amazing choral professor who really loved my voice so he worked with me incessantly. gave me solos left and right. gave me a choral scholarship, free lessons, all that. he refined what kuzma (my previous prof) fostered: fine motor movement in the mouth paired with perfect vowel placement. and brandon flowers sang in this style, i noticed, and it proved to me that i can also share music just like him. and holy god, it’s probably my “second puberty” also, but my voice sounds so fucking good. it’s crazy.

transposition. i hear so much better now. having perfect pitch accustomed to a 432 Hz for A instead of 440 Hz for A has really fucked with me. (my piano is brass strings, sounds like a baroque instrument). but i can hear with much better clarity. i play so well. i can harmonize so well. it’s all so crazy. 

i’m done organizing

oh that’s right! i got rejected from peking university in china for my master’s. lol, wow. what a fucking joke.

oh fuck, i also got arrested. possession of that good mj and drug paraphernalia. oh well. charges were dropped. went through TASC. paid 35 a week for drug tests, paid 1k for the ed seminar, paid 1k to the county attorney. record expunged. clean. it lasted from january to august. 

i got a medical marijuana card this year, also. so even though i was drug tested, my card excluded the THC testing. haha.

i ran in santa monica and malibu with my friends, four loko in hand, all to see the sunset at the same time. :) that was a pretty cute moment. we’re all so committed, needlessly or necessarily, to each other. 

i wrote “on a clear day,” which is basically an autobio of 2017, so there’s that. it’s still a little clunky, could kill to be tighter. i need to work on dialogue and sharpness. but overall, i’m pretty happy with the flow.

favorite pissed off tweet: “futures are just slow declines and prolonged extinctions.”

favorite random tweet: “in a world of smooth edges and clean white furnishings there is no room for rocks.”

work

2017 was the year i said no to a full-time offer in research in the exact area i wanted because i thought it would be better to do something that scared me. turns out you should always trust that fine distinction between risk-taking and being an ass. i felt it. now i know what it feels like. 

i was a logistics manager at a startup. it was fine and then it wasn’t. i quit. i worked at boalt law as the marketing director and head of recruitment. i pulled in 15 students to our new hybrid program. how much money did i bring in? 877,000. I almost brought you 1 million, boalt. you’re welcome. 2017 was the year i finally started serving an bartending. this is my favorite job to date. it demands precision, skilled interpersonal finesse, excellent memory, physical strength, humor, disassociation at a moment’s notice, and fun. to me, the perfect people are in this industry -- well, save for the alcoholics. but even in this case, use your own damn perspective to not bow down to the drinks. 

i start a consulting IT/design job in two weeks, and it pays a gargantuan sum of money. excited to start that new adventure for 2018. 

people i’ve dated

this was the year that men gave and gave and gave to me, sydney. i was pretty calm for the beginning, but then i became a chronic dater. didn’t fuck them all, didn’t even hook up with them all. just dated. let dudes buy me food and drinks. held hands sometimes, kissed sometimes, went to a few of their places. let’s see who: chase, riley, miles, jacob, peter, joe, nathan, andrew. most of them ended because i got bored.

jacob, though, is an interesting case. a while back, i wrote an original story about jacob and rachel (obvioulsy) situated on the iberian peninsula (portugal) about love, difference, salt, the sea, and marxism. it’s good. and jacob, the guy i’ve been seeing, researches in portugal, is an anthropology phd, and helped me so much with my own phd applications. i have so much to thank him for. 

i’ve been sort of dispelased with the lack of sex i’ve been having, but in the middle of a sydney rant, my best friend sat me down and said this: “listen, syd. you can get laid RIGHT NOW if you want. but you don’t want it to be that easy. you like to work for your sex. you want it to be sort of difficult, mysterious, built-up. so shut up.” and she was right. after six years, i finally fucked this guy i’ve wanted. he’s my brother’s best friend, and i don’t care. it was the best sex i’ve ever had, and he’s just as intelligent as me, is so sexy. fuck, this fool moaned my name more than i moaned his, and i was so turned on, and it was insane. we keep trying to meet up, but he’s out of town for a few days. here’s to hoping i can see him before i return to berkeley.

what else?

i’ll write some other shit that’s not totally neurotic later on. i still need to compile a list of my favorite cultural arts this past year. but for now, i am happy with this write-up of my year.

oh wait

yes, i graduated with two degrees in anthropology and geography, highest honor in both and a 50-page thesis under the supervision of a nobel laureate in meteorology. that was pretty cool. congrats, syd. you now have a degree from the university of california, berkeley. :) 

until next blog post

peace out. 2017. it has been real, and it’s been fun... but has it been real fun? i think so.

#2017 #in review #year in review #personal

[lasvegasnan]

✰✰RELEASE BLITZ✰✰ The Royal Treatment by MJ Summers Release Blitz @MJSummersBooks @BuoniAmiciPress Genre: Romantic Comedy, Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Romance Release Date: May 23, 2017 Hosted by: Buoni Amici Press (http://buoniamicipress.com ) #BuyNow Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Royal-Treatment-Crown-Jewels-Romance-ebook/dp/B06ZZ1KT3T iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-royal-treatment/id1227361924?mt=11&uo=4 B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-royal-treatment-mj-summers/1126243085?ean=9780995030152 Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/ebook/the-royal-treatment-8 Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/MJ_Summers_The_Royal_Treatment?id=ubetDgAAQBAJ   #Giveaway: Enter here ➜ ➜  http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/95cb0282283/ Add the book to Goodreads ➜http://bit.ly/2rfEnRO #BookBlurb Enough laughs to satisfy fans of Bridget Jones. Enough sparkly shoes and breathtaking ball gowns for fans of Cinderella… Twenty-eight-year-old Tessa Sharpe, a.k.a. The Royal Watchdog, hates everything about Prince Arthur. As far as she’s concerned, he’s an arrogant, lazy leech on the kingdom of Avonia. When he shocks the nation by giving her the keys to the castle in an attempt to boost his family’s dismal public approval ratings, Tessa has no choice but to accept and move in for two months. It’s lust at first site, but there’s no way she can give in to her feelings—not if she wants to have a career or a shred of pride left when her time at the palace ends. Ultra-private, ultra-hot Crown Prince Arthur has always gotten by on his charm. But that won’t be enough now that the royal family is about to be ousted from power once and for all. When Prince Arthur has to rely on the one woman in the kingdom who hates him most, he must learn that earning the love of a nation means first risking his heart… Can two natural enemies find their forever in each other’s arms, or will they ruin each other to save themselves? Get your copy today and be part of the feel-good fairy tale! TWO LINE DESCRIPTION: One handsome-as-sin, arrogant prince. One beautiful anti-royal blogger. Two months under the same roof. What could possibly go right? #MeetTheAuthor MJ Summers currently resides in Edmonton, Canada, with her husband, three young children, and their goofy dog. When she's not writing romance novels, she loves reading (obviously), snuggling up on the couch with her family for movie night (which would not be complete without lots of popcorn and milkshakes), and long walks in the woods near her house. MJ also spends a lot more time thinking about doing yoga than actually doing yoga, which is why most of her photos are taken ‘from above’. She also loves shutting down restaurants with her girlfriends. Well, not literally shutting them down, like calling the health inspector or something. More like just staying until they turn the lights off. MJ is a member of the Romance Writers of America, as well as the International Women's Writing Guild. MJ would love to hear from you! She does her best to respond to all inquiries and emails personally. If you would like her to attend a book club meeting via Skype please contact her to book a date. #SocialLinks Website:  www.mjsummersbooks.com Email:  [email protected] Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/MJSummersAuthorPage Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MJSummersBooks Google+:  https://plus.google.com/+MJSummers Goodreads:  http://tinyurl.com/MJSummers-Goodreads Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mj_summers_author/ Amazon Author Central: http://www.amazon.com/MJ-Summers/e/B00GHQY5S4 Newsletter Sign-up: https://mjsummersbooks.wordpress.com/secret-scenes/ #Excerpt I’ve added #1 in the HTML, feel free to swap out for any if the others if you wish. EXCERPTS #1: Prince Arthur: When we reach the vault room, there are two guards standing at the door. Normally there is just one, sitting on the inside; but for nights like tonight, there are a total of six. I nod, and one of them opens the door. “Good evening, fellows,” I say. “Good evening, Your Highness.” Once inside the room, we go through the same routine with the other four men. I go to the keypad and press the code, then hold my face in front of the camera for a retina scan. When I look down at Tessa, she actually looks impressed. “A little Bond-esque, no?” I ask. “Very.” “Come on, Moneypenny, let’s get you something for that beautiful neck of yours.” I tug her hand and pull her in with me before she can say no. She’s already shaking her head, but I hold up one finger. “I can see those Sharpe family brains of yours going to work on ten different reasons why you won’t borrow a necklace, but I have already prepared counterarguments, and since we are now twelve minutes behind schedule, please allow me. One, they’re already paid for, some of them hundreds of years ago, so it’s not coming out of anyone’s taxes. Two, like the books in the library, they’re going to waste in here. Three, for the first time in my life, I want to share something with someone else—someone who deserves to feel like a queen, even if she’ll only allow herself that for one measly little evening. Four, I have this fantasy of seeing you in only the jewels. Maybe the heels could stay.” Tessa laughs and her cheeks go pink. “All right. One necklace, but make it a cheap one.” I raise one eyebrow. “Define cheap.” “Less than a kitchen stool.” “How about less than a car?” “Sofa.” “I said ‘queen.’ Would a queen really wear a sofa around her neck?” I reach up and run my fingertips along the base of her neck. “Would she wear a car?” “Good point.” I lean down and kiss the crook of her neck. “How about this? You choose whichever one you like the best, and I won’t tell you how much it’s worth.” I continue to brush my lips along her skin, then move up to her earlobe. The other night, I discovered a little spot at the base of her ear that turns her to putty. After a moment of some careful work, I get what I want. A breathy, little ‘okay’ escapes her lips. Excerpt #2: Tessa: “I don’t find you attractive at all, really,” I say. He stops his hand and raises one eyebrow in response. I hide my smile with everything in me. “I only slept with you because I felt sorry for you.” “Oh, so that was a—” “A pity fuck, I’m afraid.” I try my best to look apologetic, but he’s clearly not buying it. “Three times?” “I felt really, really, really sorry for you.” Excerpt #3: Text Conversation between Prince Arthur and Tessa: Arthur: Any chance you want a plus one for this mysterious family obligation? Tessa: You would hate it. It’s a horridly loud birthday party for my very wild but adorable twin nephews, who are turning six. Arthur: Will there be strippers? Tessa: Not if you don’t count their three-year-old brother who hates to wear clothes. Arthur: He definitely does not count. Tessa: All I can promise is that there will be cheap store-bought cake with sickeningly sweet icing and beer. Arthur: You had me at sickeningly sweet icing. Tessa: Meet me at the front doors in fifteen? Arthur: I’ll be there in ten.

[theday]

ALSO!! ALL!! (you can skip '''brian''' if you want hsksjskssm)

we’re in for a long ride boys..... under read more im ready

Wonpil: How would you describe your personality?

i wanna just say pass but we die like men so. im pretty dang sure i have 2 personalities one for online stuff and one when im doing irl shit but lately ive been trying 2 be consistent anyway not 2 toot my own horn but im fairly nice i feel like? i send nice asks because it makes me happy seeing the responder’s answer and i try to give comments on art/fics whenever i can in tags or in the comment section so id say im fairly nice. online its easier to say i love you every second and the love is real obviously so i would say im also a big friend lover?? however ! negative time boys.. im also generally rude which is something that defines me really i used to be really sarcastic on purpose too which has somehow disappeared over the years but whatever i can be mean and i will be mean and i kind of hate that so i wanna try to stop going out of my way to be mean to people who .. well I MEAN this person is kinda asking for it their behaviour is .. disgusting so.... not that its okay to be mean on purpose though but idk man im just shady to people i dont like thats who i am unfortunately yike.. . but i will never try to be extremely mean/rude to my friends and even if i am i will make sure its in a joking manner although i do tend to get carried away so my mouth/hands move quicker than my brain and if i do make any of my pals uncomfortable please tell me so i can corrwct my ways and this got long wtf abyway 2 sum it UP i am a nice but rude person lmao also i try 2 b funny sometimes but.. .. .. 

Young K: you prefer sexy or cute concepts?

im gonna answer this anyway lol day6 dont know a sexy

Sungjin: are you more of a childish friend or a mom friend?

i try 2 b the mum friend but only with bell lmao ok actually... im always asking my pals 2 go the FUCk to bed so maybe i am the mum friend... .. 

Dowoon: Do you get shy easily?

ya with strangers who are most definitely 2 cool 4 me but when i warm up 2 the people im really wild lmao i was attacking jen like 3 seconds into our friendship the duality of megan 

Jae: Do you wear glasses?

my middle name is glasses ive had to wear them since i was 6 bc i watched too much pokemon while sitting way 2 close to the screen im p sure im gonna go blind soon

Congratulations: When was your last relationship?

i didnt even have 1 lmao 

Letting Go: Who is someone you miss very much right now?

monsta x :-( theyre grandpas so they dont use twitter as much as our children astro

I Wait: Favorite genre of music?

i dont have a favorite since i can listen to anything and find it nice lol but I really really really like day6′s music so much because i have a preference for bands and day6 make such amazing songs wtf i wait just started playing so my favorite genre? day6

You Were Beautiful: Tag your fave mutual!

if this blog was still just u and me falen youd be tagged but now i have 5 mutuals and i love all of them so im gonna have to pass

I’m Serious: Vacation on the beach or vacation by the mountains?

by the mountains? i cant even live by myself in a house id die if i went anywhere near that rocky and unstable so beach please

Dance Dance: do you know any choreographies by heart?

bits and pieces of certain songs only ive had the i need u choreo by bts (the chorus part) stuck in my mind lately bc bin sanha and mj danced to it in that one video its the best bts song ive ever heard 10/10 idk a dna (i dont even stan bts)

My Day: How long have you been a Day6 stan?

since 25/06/17 i thank boxy everyday of my life for this honestly without her i wouldve never found so many amazing people both my mutuals and the groups i now stan

EveryDay6: Fave Day6 song?

pass but bc they just released their oct tracks so id have to be when you love someone but i need somebody is cutting it real close i cant just have (1) favorite song when all their songs are so different it makes me wanna love all of them

Pink sweater: Describe the worse outfit you’ve ever worn

godt.................. so i was a big power rangers fan back in the day and i really loved the yellow ranger from the dinosaur power rangers idk the name but anyway the person wore this like.. pants? and a skirt over it ?? which makes 0 sense now bc it was jeans and a fucking ballerina skirt shit and i hate skirts but i still fucking copied her outfit bc im gay for that yellow ranger and i cant believe i went out in public wearing a skirt over jeans??? wtf was i smoking so. never again

Chicken Little: What fictional character can you relate most to?

oh bOY? i dont know man? it changes every time i get into a new thing but i feel like theres no character ive actually related to yet? ive only had favourite characters so far

Bob: What’s a nickname your friends/family call you?

my family idk man but my friends can call me whatever they want im cool

Are you a bear: What’s the weirdest question you’ve ever gotten?

my memory is so bad i dont remember anything??? um    m idk fam

Terry He: How long is/was your longest friendship?

with an internet friend it was like 5 years? i cut ties with her though thankfully and with irl buds 4 years bc u knw sch.. i doubt we’ll hang out again depending on our results rip

ASC: YoungFeel or JaehyungParkIan?

i breathe jaehyungparkian 

thank you sosoosososos much for asking falen wt f i love you my soulmate.. no lie tho the question i was looking forward to the most was the last one 

#softshouyous #asks