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borahaerhy · 2 years

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Love and Sarcasm (3) - knj

Summary: The second semester of your sophomore year in college has started and there are only two people in your creative writing class that have published works: You, and Kim Namjoon; a pretentious know-it-all that just so happens to be in the same frat as your best friend.

Pairing: Fuckboy!Namjoon x Demi!Chubby!Reader

Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, College! au, eventual smut

Warnings: Very lightly detailed smut (right below the cut), Jimin out's Y/n as being demi, Namjoon realizing he's kinda shitty, this is honestly mostly just Namjoon's internal monologue, Namjoon is conflicted and kinda self-deprecating, everyone is in denial, Namjoon actually being nice???

Word count: 4k

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Namjoon quickly grabbed her hands and pinned them above her head, holding them there with one of his hands as he attached his mouth to her neck. She moaned loudly as he repeatedly thrust into her as fast as he could. He moved his unoccupied hand to cover her mouth as he felt her orgasm approaching, not wanting to hear her get any louder as he buried his face into her shoulder; not even wanting to see her as he finished.

It’s not that she was unattractive, or that her voice was annoying, or that she was anything less than what he had normally gone for. She was actually one of the most stereotypically attractive women that he’d ever slept with. She was just wrong.

Her hands traveling over him was wrong. The sound of her moans filling the room was wrong. The way she looked while she was laying under him was wrong; her hips too narrow and her thighs too slim.

It was weird, Namjoon not being attracted to someone he slept with. He didn’t have what you’d call a type; people come in all shapes and sizes and that was something he loved and embraced. And Lane had been no different until she started taking her clothes off. After that she just felt wrong.

Namjoon pushed himself off of her, standing as he put his clothes back on.

“That was good, we should do it again sometime,” Namjoon smiled as he buckled his belt.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll call you,” he backed away from the bed, opening the door behind him and leaving his bedroom with her in it only to see Jimin leaning against the wall opposite his room. He furrowed his eyebrows. “Hey man, what’s up?”

“I thought I told you to stay the fuck away from Y/n?” Jimin pushed himself off the wall as Namjoon shushed him, not really wanting the girl in his room to hear him getting yelled at about another woman.

“Okay, what’s the problem?” Namjoon only responded as they entered Jimin’s room and closed the door so hopefully people wouldn’t overhear.

“The problem is I told you to stay away from her weeks ago, and you’re still trying to fuck with her, why?” Namjoon stood with his arms crossed his chest, confused as to why this sudden outburst needed to happen now of all times.

“She’s hot? Why the fuck are you bringing this up now?”

“Because she just watched you bring a random girl up here and left,” Jimin was about to continue, his anger swelling up inside him as he spoke, but he was cut off by Namjoon who was getting increasingly frustrated.

“How is that my problem? She’s made it very clear I’m not going to get anywhere so I don’t know why her feelings would be hurt–”

“Her feelings are hurt because you made her like you when she hates literally everyone. She made it clear nothing was going to happen because she knows you just wanted to have sex and leave but that’s not how she works–”

“What do you mean that’s not how she works?” Jimin rolled his eyes and sighed, running his fingers through his hair.

“She’s demisexual. She can’t just have sex with people, and if she’s willing to sleep with someone it’s because she’s in love with them, so the only way you can get her into bed for whatever fucking game you’ve got going on is to make her fall in love with you. And judging by the fact that she had to make up a bullshit excuse to leave when she saw you with her means you’re doing too fucking much,” Namjoon’s face softened as his eyes left Jimin’s.

He wanted to mess around with you to play a stupid game, sure, but he didn’t want to hurt you that bad. Maybe make things awkward for you in that class so you’d stop showing him up, but he didn’t want to make you fall in love with him; not for this. Not like this.

Namjoon hated admitting when he was wrong, hated accepting the fact that he could be wrong. He used to be able to, used to be able to not only see his faults but admit them openly to anyone he’d felt he’d wronged. As time went on and more people wronged him, he slowly stopped caring if he let someone down, or used them, or made them feel bad in any way. If people could fuck him over as much as they pleased, why shouldn’t he do the same? He never felt guilty because he knew the world was full of shitty people, and the next person would inevitably do the same.

But there was something about you. Something about you that made him feel like he’d done something bad. You made him feel guilty for hurting you, and he didn’t know why.

He hated it.

He hated it because he felt it even long before Jimin got mad at him, long before he slept with someone that wasn’t you. He felt guilty the second you called him out for manipulating you. You could see through him and that pissed him off; but what pissed him off more was how you somehow managed to make him feel bad for doing things he’d always done. For doing the things that had been done to him. You were just like everyone else, just as shitty and just as manipulative as everyone he’d met before.

But then you weren’t.

Every time he spent time with you, you wore him down a little more. You would let yourself relax when he would speak about his family, old friends, both happy and sad memories alike. You would lower your walls only slightly so you could be soft with him; gently reassuring him with your kind eyes and understanding smile until he was done speaking.

You’d helped him with his work even though he made a game out of insulting your intelligence; and you weren’t the kind of person he’d initially thought you were. It wasn’t just that Jimin never let you come to their parties, you never went to any parties, not anymore at least. You stayed to yourself, reading your books and drinking your coffee with a quiet job and social life. And it didn’t bother you.

You didn’t mind being alone, or that you only really had one friend, or that you weren’t invited to every party. You were comfortable spending time with yourself. You didn’t need constant validation from others and from what Namjoon could tell you didn’t want it.

You were as gentle as you were powerful, and he didn’t want to believe you could be any better than him. He didn’t want to believe you, the sarcastic, rude and annoying girl could have any more layers than what he’d seen the day he met you. He hadn’t taken the time to get to know anyone in years if he was being honest; and even with you resisting him, he’d gotten to know you.

You’d spent so much time keeping your walls up trying not to let him in that Namjoon forgot to do the same. He tried to break down your walls and make you vulnerable so he could get in and didn’t even realize he’d forgotten all about his own walls, and you walked right in and made yourself at home. He let you in when you weren’t even trying to get in.

You seemed almost invincible to him; never letting him know how you were feeling. You never let him see you actually get upset. Anytime you fought it was always you confidently standing your ground, not at all affected by what he was doing. He wasn’t hurting you— how could he be? You always seemed fine.

But Jimin knows you better than he probably ever would. You left because of him; because of what he was doing with someone that wasn’t you. He hurt you and Jimin made damn sure he knew that he did.

He felt guilty. He was guilty, and for the first time in years, he wanted to apologize. He wanted to own up and tell you he was sorry for not dropping this dumb game sooner. He should’ve the second you called him out on it, but he was too stubborn, too obsessed with winning a fake game that only he knew about rather than actually trying to be a decent person. Like you.

The Sunday after the party was a quiet one where you stayed in, watching movies and eating some leftover chinese from a few days prior when Jimin ordered in while studying together. You definitely weren’t looking forward to going to class tomorrow, having called off work today so that you wouldn’t have to see Namjoon, just in case he decided to show up. But tomorrow guaranteed that you'd see him as neither of you had ever missed a day.

You snuggled up on your couch, hugging your pillow with your blanket pulled up around you. You jumped up slightly as you heard someone knocking on your door. Your brow furrowed as you tried to think of why anyone would be here, knowing Jimin takes day’s after parties to sleep throughout, and seeing as it’s only 1 pm, there was no way he’d be up. And it’s not like you actually spoke to anyone else that knew where you lived.

You stood, picking up the food container’s up from off the coffee table, throwing them away on your way to the front door. You straightened your clothes and rushed back over to your couch to straighten up the pillows and throw the blanket over the back of the couch as the knocking continued.

You ran over to the door and opened it to reveal Namjoon who was looking down at his phone when you opened the door, brow knit before he looked up at you and slid his phone back in his pocket as he started to smile.

“Sorry, I thought I might’ve had the wrong place,” you kept your brow furrowed as you looked at him, confused as to how the fuck he knew your address. As if reading your mind, he spoke again. “Jimin gave me your address, though it definitely wasn’t easy to get it out of him,” You nodded, happy he at least wasn’t stalking you.

“Remind me to kill him,” You spoke as you nodded before you sighed, opening the door a little more and backed up so he could walk in. You walked back over to the couch and picked up the remote, pausing the movie you had been watching as he closed the door behind him as he took a few steps into your small apartment.

You stood at the edge of your sofa, a few feet away from where Namjoon stood as you crossed your arms over your chest. “Why are you here?” You asked, trying not to sound rude. Namjoon looked down at his hand, where he was holding what looked like another one of those extremely sweet coffees.

“I brought you a coffee. It’s a caramel macchiato, if you were wondering,” he lifted the cup and held it out for you to take, taking a step closer to you so you could reach it. You accepted it, putting it down on your coffee table and re-crossed your arms, beckoning him to continue. “I also just wanted to apologize.”

“What for?” You questioned, not wanting him to get the idea that you cared about what happened at the party. Because you definitely didn’t.

“For the fight we had the other night,” He paused as you nodded slightly, looking down awkwardly. “And, you know, just in general for the shit I’ve been doing to you,” you were caught off guard by his words, never actually expecting him to admit what he was doing. You were almost convinced he wasn’t doing it at all.

“You were right. I lied and tried to manipulate you so that I could win some dumb game that I was playing with myself. I hate it when anyone is better than I am, and you so obviously were, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. But as I was trying to break you, I got to know you in between the sarcastic comments and insults and realized that you actually made me want to be better. I felt guilty, and while I usually ignored it or just got pissed off, I was really just mad at myself, I think.

“Last night I was thinking and realized that I didn’t want to win anymore, I just want to be around you without it being a game because I like you,” Namjoon paused, closing his eyes and waving slightly, “Uh, I mean like your personality, you’re like a cool person that I'd like to get to know without any ulterior motive.”

You nodded slightly, not fully looking him in the eye as you tried to decide just how genuine he was being. This could all be part of his game, make himself innocent by fessing up what you already knew. But if he was able to get Jimin to give him my address, he had to convince him, which would be a lot harder than me, right?

“Could you maybe answer me? I haven’t been this honest with a woman in years and your silence is kind of freaking me out,” You shook your head, pulling yourself out of your thoughts as you looked back up at him.

“Yeah, it’s cool, still like 90 percent convinced that confession was a manipulation tactic, but I appreciate the apology nonetheless,” Namjoon gave a slight smile at your answer, happy that you at least appreciated his words; even if you weren’t ready to believe them yet.

“I’ll take it. At least it’s something,” he looked back up at you, your arms crossed and hip jutted out, so guarded from the rest of the world. “Would you want to grab something to eat with me? My treat, and I won't get mad and storm out, nor will I try to ask you on a date. I promise,” His mouth slightly curved upward into a semi-smile, head tilted down as he searched your face for your reaction.

You thought for a second, heel tapping against the ground as you looked at the coffee sitting on your table. A ring of water that had dripped from the cup was now sitting on your wooden table, ready to stain if you didn’t clean it up soon. You sighed, uncrossing your arms and standing back up straight, kicking your weight off the couch as you looked back over at him.

“Fine, let me go get dressed,” You refrained from looking him in the eye before you turned to walk into your bedroom that sat between your kitchen and living room, closing the door as Namjoon smiled.

Hours had passed and you and Namjoon were still seated at the restaurant, talking pleasantly with one another as if you had been old friends. He seemed so much more genuine than before, flirting much less (though still slipping a few comments in without thinking about it) and taking an interest in the things that you said. He almost couldn’t help himself but to hang on to every word that left your lips as they seemed so much more poetic now that he wasn’t just trying to get into your pants. Had you always been so well-spoken hidden under the sarcastic brooding?

He couldn’t stop himself from asking you if you’d still be willing to help him with his work in human rights. Any chance he could to spend more time with you he wanted to seize, even if he had convinced himself that your superior studying techniques helped him memorize things better; and that was the only reason.

You agreed, forever forgiving and always wanting to help. And now that he at least seemed to be acting more genuine, he let a more reserved, almost sensitive side of him show that you needed to see more of. Maybe he had only acted like a monster to hide himself; not that that was an excuse, but something you could relate with deeply.

A few weeks had gone by and your study sessions with Namjoon were an almost daily occurrence, taking place usually in the library when you were on breaks, but sometimes in your apartment where Namjoon would order you food and let you use his Netflix, so you didn’t have to pirate everything you wanted to watch. Jimin was always at your place whenever you were, so it wasn’t uncommon for the two of them to not-so-subtly fight for your attention. Jimin always won, but Namjoon in all honesty didn’t mind.

He loved watching how the two of you interacted with one another, having never seen friends so close to one another. He had thought during many times in his life that he had had really good friends, friendships that people would kill to have but that was before seeing you. Both completely content and comfortable in your relationship that nothing else really mattered. He watched the two of you watching the Harry Potter movies, both able to recite every word to certain lines of the movies with perfect recollection as if you’d watched them together thousands of times (which you likely had).

But he loved when he got you alone, too. Without the bodyguard that came in the form of a man that looked to be about as dangerous as a butterfly, you had your own way about you that he couldn’t quite explain. With Jimin, you were comfortable. You knew everything about him, and he knew the same. You could interact with him without even trying, looking at him for a second translated into an entire conversation. You understood each other.

But when you were alone with Namjoon, you were also comfortable; but in a much different way.

You had become comfortable talking to him about the things that your old friend had already known. Telling stories that explain why you have an irrational fear of any and all bugs, or how your lucky socks came to be. Why you hated cheese but loved pizza and couldn’t stand when people wrote in your notebook because they always did it wrong.

He could listen to you talk about the small thing’s you never thought to tell anyone but he was so curious to know more about that he just had to ask when he heard Jimin bring it up. He watched the light blush creep up onto your cheek as you scrunched your nose in disapproval of his question, looking back down at the textbook in front of you.

Tonight was one of those nights he couldn’t seem to stop looking at you, especially when the conversation had become a bit more x rated, because there you were again, nose scrunched in disapproval as your cheeks were tinted pink with embarrassment.

“Sex is hardly the most romantic thing a person can do,” You shook your head with distaste, your feet sitting on your seat and your knees pulled into your chest with your hands folded neatly between the two. Namjoon gave you a wide eyed look of his own disbelief as he threw a chip in his mouth.

“What are you talking about, sex is like, the most romantic thing?” His mouth was still half full as he spoke, leaned back in his seat as he wanted to continue the conversation for as long as possible, and only partially because he wanted a break from studying.

“Says the guy who exclusively does one-night stands,” you scoffed as you drank you iced caramel macchiato, something you had grown to love the overt sweetness of.

“Who says one-night stands can’t be romantic?” you rolled your eyes.

“In order for something to be romantic it has to emotionally feel good, not just physically,” You sat up slightly, crossing your legs in your large office chair that sat at your dining room table, very un-aesthetically. “And you can’t really get to know what would make someone emotionally feel good if you’ve only known them for an hour,” you shrugged, popping a chip into your own mouth as Namjoon narrowed his eyes at you, as if trying to read you. He was.

“Fine then, what’s peak-romance for you then?” He spoke nonchalantly as he relaxed his previously clenched jaw and looked down at you, round cheeks once again heating up as you tried to hide your face from him.

“That is none of your business,” You spoke through a smile as you looked back down at the unfinished work on your table, but Namjoon pulled the book away from you. It was his homework you had been working on, after all.

“Hey, I already told you mine, and fairs fair,” he put your book on top of his, leaning his elbows on top of them to prevent you from taking it back as he looked at you with wide eyes, a small smirk playing on his thick lips. You rolled your eyes and leaned back into your seat, face not letting up on the furious blushing as you looked at him for a moment before sighing, admitting defeat.

“It’s just this weird niche thing that realistically would never happen, even if I were to initiate it, there’s a very slim chance that they’d do the same back for me so it’s not anything that would really happen so there’s really no need in exploring–”

“You’re stalling,” he almost sang, interrupting your scattered thoughts as his smile only got wider. You sighed again, fidgeting slightly.

“I just think it would be really sweet if we each took our favorite book, read through them again, but wrote little notes in the margins. Like detailing what you had initially thought when you read it for the first time, or pointing out spots you’d think they’d like, maybe a really cringy scene you skip every time you read it, just anything really. And then you would give them your favorite book with all of your thoughts laid right out on the page for them to read,” You were still looking down at your fingers in your lap, face tinted red as you spoke aloud the thing you’d been fantasizing about your whole life.

And Namjoon was speechless. That wasn’t something that had even crossed his mind on the list of romantic activities partners could do together. Granted, most of his activities involved being naked and covered in sweat.

He cleared his throat after he stared at you for what was probably an unnecessary amount of time, moving your book back over to you as he spoke. “That definitely makes my answer look a little shallow,” he joked, causing you to finally look back up at him. You both ignored the awkward air that surrounded you, diving back into the work you were supposed to finish hours ago.

Though Namjoon made it take way longer even still, as he kept getting distracted by the way your soft eyes would look deeply into his. The way your warm skin felt as it brushed against his when you wrote something on his paper. How your voice progressively got softer as the night got longer, as did your cute giggles.

The only thought in his head as he left your apartment and walked down to where he had parked his car was what book would I want to show her?

Note: Ik it's a little shorter but the next chapter will be either be the last or second to last, depending on how long I want to make this ending play out. I hope you enjoy a less shitty Namjoon :))

Taglist: @canarystwin @scuzmunkie @cuteipat @lovesickbangtan @lovemepie67 @piecesofapril11

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thesporkidentity · 6 months

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this turned much more into a dump about my personal emotions and the importance of queer history rather than actual dracula meta, so it's going under the read more, untagged and unrebloggable and a rather unintelligable mess so i can stop bitching about it in my head and move on lol

so my usual shippy jokes aside for a moment, i'm actually quite emotional (in like, 2 completely opposite directions) about the "Godalming and Seward are both happily married," and not even about the line itself, but about certain reactions to that line. and to be clear, this is not a criticism at all of holmward or doing queer readings of older texts at all, i think those are both great. it's more a very specific subset of reactions i've seen of people talking about how funny it is that stoker wrote it ambiguously and never imagined it could be read be read in anything but a straight way, framed as a "lol, how clueless," and it really drove home to me how much things have changed for our community and how quickly.

when this was published in 1897, oscar wilde had just been released from his 2 years of imprisonment and hard labor for the "gross indecency" of homosexuality, which the judge lamented as an inadequate maximum sentence for such a horrible crime. a little over 50 years later in 1952, alan turing was chemically castrated rather than imprisoned for gross indecency and killed himself 2 years later. they didn't even start official decriminalization until 1967, and even then only in a very limited fashion (higher age of consent than for straights, still no sodomy allowed, only when two people are alone in a structure, so no hotels or even another person in a completely separate room of the house, etc., restrictions not repealed until 2000). same-sex marriage wasn't legalized until between 2014 and 2020 depending on where you were in the uk.

just. the idea of same-sex marriage being a read someone might reasonably have would have been unfathomable in 1897, let alone something it would be laughable not to anticipate. hell, i'm not even middle-aged, and i remember my own country's striking down of sodomy laws in 2003 and the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015. i was a full grown man when that happened. that wasn't even 10 years ago! that's an insane turnaround in just a few decades.

and now we have youngins, some who are even full grown adults now, who think it's silly that stoker never considered someone might interpret that line differently because of course he should have specified "to women and not to each other," blithely unaware of a time in which that clarification wasn't necessary because even the act of being queer, let alone marrying, was illegal.

like, there's a huge difference between "straight goggles" making someone unaware of a very obvious queer read and the realities of their environment precluding certain interpretations in such a way that further elaboration isn't necessary. (and given the inescapability of the wilde trial and the intentional differences between the english and american publications, i don't think stoker was unaware of the homoeroticism in his novel.)

and my first reaction was frustration because god, please learn your history! i love jokes and memes as much as the next guy but i'm begging you to read up on your country's queer history, this progress is so new and so fragile, and you really do need to know the history of your community for a multitude of reasons i don't want to get into on a dracula post! like, it almost hurts to see this lack of awareness, it feels like a denial of our very real lived experience of less than ten years ago or like y'all believe it's not worth learning about.

and then my second, completely opposite reaction, was a sort of begrudging happiness because that's what we want, what we've been working towards. (or perhaps not exactly because my ideal world would have things like queer history included in curriculum so kids actually learn it.) a world where it is silly to think that two men marrying each other isn't an equivalent and obvious interpretation of being told that two men got married. so i'm just sitting here genuinely thrilled that these kids have no emotional memory of a world before the acceptance of, if not legalization of, same-sex marriage. while also being incredibly frustrated by that ignorance because that wasn't and isn't the reality for so many of us, and that very acceptance of marriage equality as a given is what also blinds them to the way their statements can feel so unintentionally dismissive.

like, i'm so glad you've never had to go through what those before you have, but also you need to sit down and read a history book because even if i never want you to have that experience you do need to have that knowledge and understanding of the past.

and then it feels silly to be having all these feelings over a single line about a possible ship between two victorian blorbos, but really the emotions aren't about the ship or the blorbos or the book at all. i just really want people to learn some fucking queer history.

#personal whining #i just needed to get this out so i could stop dwelling on it #and i don't have a diary so this will have to do #it's time for kris's opinion!#i mean y'all kinda signed up for this when you clicked that follow button but i do generally try not to do this to you lol

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onewomancitadel · 1 year

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I had a post I wrote in my head in bed the other day and I was like, do I need to really share my stupid thoughts with the world again? If I don't rapid-fire post I don't post at all - anyway, on the subject of moral reasoning, I think that the capacity to recognise a text makes you uncomfortable or depicts immoral acts is itself a gift and it is highly ironic there are people concerned about the moral content of fiction that recognise the moral content of said fiction is problematic, disturbing, uncomfortable, or undesirable behaviour in real life. If anything I would personally say it speaks to more of an urgency surrounding media criticism and reading comprehension as opposed to the need to suppress the actual existence of xyz works themselves (and similarly who is interacting with those works).

There is really a responsibility that even goes beyond the individual author/creator and what they choose to portray - e.g. Nabokov's profound discomfort and condemnation of the covers used for Lolita, including internationally, gave a very different impression from what the actual text proper was conveying - the conflict of the little girl, only twelve, whose name was Dolores, contrasted against a sex object on the covers chosen by the publisher. I'm not here to debate Lolita, but we're not even just talking about the failure of reading comprehension, we're talking about the abject disrespect of the publishing industry towards the author, and how they chose to portray the work; it literally was, in part, a case of judging a book by its cover. Would you have reason to question the text if you were already told by the cover what you were in for, even if you were possessed of the capacity to do so?

Of course I don't think moral reasoning is everything: the idea that the only thing standing between bad behaviour and corrected behaviour is the knowledge that said behaviour is bad is naïve at best (and a common error in most social justice movements now).

But I do think the fundamental argument undergirding the current 'media consumption crisis', otherwise known as the anti-proshipping conflict (which does transcend fandom, so I find it insufficient a term), that people do not have the capacity to recognise that a given work is morally wrong in some way, and the inability to recognise that a given work is morally wrong influences and causes immoral behaviour in everyday life, is ironically enough kind of proven wrong by its very proponents.

That ability to morally reason is a gift that shouldn't be wasted, and it is why I find the 'just relax it's not real' refrain uninteresting because I do think that there is real moral value and debate possible and worthwhile in fiction which partly justifies its apparent 'problematic' content. I also think that ultimately the reason this has become a battleground is because there are much more serious moral crises, even in the realm of media consumption, that are very hard to face, and fandom (and media criticism and its spectacle) is an easier space to navigate and control.

You might wonder why I write posts on this topic since I find most of the conversation farcical at best - it's because most of my fictional interests are termed as problematic, which is wildly ironic because something like a redemption arc is, to me, celebratory of best moral intentions and ideals. Where I feel somewhat unmoored is that I'm not entirely on the side that moral ideals are left to die in fiction, and I think that the existence of works that are not self-justifying are actually bad in some way, but equally the side that wants to erase this unrealised potential is frustrating. What is even more offensive to me is that ultimately most of this debate is small fry, whereas storytelling itself is probably half the reason I am alive.

#stirring the pot

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demonslayedher · 2 years

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How you doing Buri Senpai !!

Personal question…. How do you manage to get out of your art/writing block/ burnout ? You are an incredible artist and writer and i wish to be like you someday❤️

(///￣￣///) Thank you, Anon. Like most other people who do any sort of creative work, I am constantly seeking validation. I don’t think that ever goes away. That is why I’ll give you the truth, I get a lot of happy chemicals from making KnY fanwork, at the expense of any other creative work I could be doing.

There’s lots and lots of discussion out there on what leads to creative burnout and how perfectionism kills success by preventing someone from even starting a project, and anyone who has ever worked hard on something only to feel it met with a disappointing response can tell you about the heartbreak of feeling like none of your efforts are worth anything. It’s very easy to say “write for you, draw what you want, fandom should be fun” but we all know that sometimes it’s not. That’s the best advice I think is out there, though, so I’m just going to expand a bit.

…I tried, but my answers all kept getting rambly. ლ(¯ロ¯"ლ)

The truth is that KnY is escapism for me and that is why I create so much of it!! For as long as I’m busy with this, and getting dopamine from making fanwork, my projects I’m willing to tell people about in real life are going to continue to get ignored! O ho ho! I fear failure!! I know they won’t be perfect and that is why I do not wish to create them in the first place! I do not wish to be judged as imperfect!!! Ohhh, ho ho ho ho! O-o-o-o-hhhhhh ho ho ho ho!

Ah. But that’s probably a big reason why I create so much KnY content: the stakes are lower than other things I might wish to accomplish. Since I don’t have any high expectations of my art anymore I can allow myself to relax with it and accept its wonkiness as part of it, if anything, that’s in the spirit of the original manga, right? Also, I’m practiced enough with my drawing that even though I don’t know proper drawing technique, I can intuitively go about bringing a lot of things from my head to paper, so that makes it something I do to relax.

While I have given myself permission to be lazy with art for the sake of enjoying it, I do still harbor the same childhood dream of getting published, even though my understanding of that now comes with vague knowledge of all the burn-outable activities that come with (self-promotion, blaaaaargh, please just let me live under a rock). Sometimes, when I realize just how high my KnY-related word count is, I get aggravated with myself for not having poured that power into my own original projects. But failure would feel so much higher with those, so I stick to what I know I can accomplish, as I lo-o-o-ve the feeling of accomplishing things.

But…

Well…

One of the best times I got that feeling was was when I sat down and actually wrote a few manga short stories, beginning to end, with no idea what I was doing. All it really took was a kick in the pants from someone holding me accountable. I had 55 books printed to basically give away to people. I had them all stacked up when they arrived and was stunned at how slim the spines were. All those hours, poured into that small a result, something that could be consumed and forgotten so easily?

But then again, I had something. Something complete, so that if the topic of OCs ever came up, I hand something to hand to someone, to say, “this.”

It was sometime after that when I crushed my first NaNoWriMo attempt by a long-shot (50,000 words? Pfffhaahahaha, when I’m prepared and have my schedule cleared for it, that’s nothing!), and even though that first novel objectively was terrible, it broke me in and made me realize that I could do it. I’ve written three more full drafts of other stories since then, though I was so frustrated with the overhaul second draft of one of them that I quit on it and then, uh, started watching KnY. Teh heh…

But I guess that really is the drive. To have something I can give to someone to say, “This. I have put my thoughts and feelings to form. It’s a form I can share now.” Sure, it’s really nice to imagine having a fandom following or striking it big with a hit or something, but it would never be enough validation, and that sounds like a sure way to get burnt out.

So even in fandom, even when I get other ideas of what might be fun (or just popular?) blog content, at some level I just want to say “I got this idea, I gave it form, please appreciate it.” And, as is the key to most forms of happiness, I’m really, really grateful for the people who bother to read my wordy work, who leave their thoughts, and who take my ideas and run with them and make new ideas from them. My fandom content isn’t made specifically for my own pleasure, I really, really do get joy out of other people finding joy in it, and satisfaction in knowing I put it into a form that can be enjoyed instead of just having it in my own head. It's like my relaxed attitude toward my drawing, though. In order to keep my fandom fun, I keep my expectations in check so that I can still relax and have fun with it. I don't get involved with things that require effort I don't feel like putting in, I don't hold myself responsible for giving anyone else fandom validation either, it's not a give and take economy of praise. When I want to praise you I will dump it on you and you will know it's from the heart. Keeping things relaxed requires boundaries and embracing one's own laziness, so that you can focus on what you really care about.

But the not-as-fun projects that come with high stakes, the ones that keep calling me… they’re out there, and I need to polish my rough areas to answer the call, someday.

I just fear what becoming my best self will entail.

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literaticat · 2 years

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I've gotten offers of representation from agents who were low key racist. Thankfully, I signed with an agent I feel more comfortable with. However, I worry about going on sub and finding the right editor and publisher. I've seen a POC editor mock and judge how people of my ethnicity portray our culture first hand so it's not like all POC editors are safe. Other than through whisper networks, what are ways to navigate through this concern?

Ugh, I'm sorry. OK. The problem is of course, it's hard to know how well you will work with somebody based on other people's experiences, one person's "refreshingly honest" is another person's "terribly rude", ANY editor (or agent, or writer, or person) might have unexamined biases or let micro-aggressions come out to play, regardless of their background. And like -- how CAN you know that in advance? The 'whisper network' is a thing, but also, if you are new or not plugged in to other writers, you might not be hearing all the whispers. Or other writers might have a grand old time with an editor, but YOU wouldn't necessarily, and there can't really be 'whispers' about THAT situation -- the whispers are more for like, actual malfeasance. It's tough, no doubt.

(Additionally, I will say, this is BY NO MEANS an excuse for anyone's bad behavior or salty tongue, and CERTAINLY not for outright racism obvs, BUT it happens that lots of times people in publishing, at all levels, have a sort of "gallows humor" thing going that is best suited to their friends chat rather than public consumption, or make jokes about, say, shitty queries or submissions, or vent about "dumb things writers do" without being really even aware that they are participating in something hurtful, they are just like "ARGH I have seen TEN THOUSAND of _____ don't they KNOW how frustrating it is, here's a MEAN JOKE ON TWITTER" -- which obviously is not great. But I'm sure I've been guilty of it, too, especially in my younger days, and try to be extra-mindful about what kinds of things I tweet and say as a result, because I have seen how hurtful it can be. Youth + Frustration/Burnout + Twitter = A TOXIC BREW)

So. I'd say, first of all, since you are (thankfully) comfortable with your agent, I think sincerely telling them your concerns is important. They will know if other clients have had bad experiences with certain folks, and will avoid them - -and you can ALWAYS tell them frankly, "look, I want to avoid Betsy McEditor and in fact the Flowbee imprint as a whole because I know that my friends have had awful/racist/weird experiences there" -- and they will not sub to those places.

Then, when you have interest from editors, it's a good idea to do some light reconnaissance by seeing what else they have worked on (Things you adore and resonate with? Things you detest? Or what?) -- and talk to authors that work with them (If you don't know any of the authors, start by asking your agent if any of their clients work with them and would mind your having a chat).

[ETA: I don't think you need to do all this legwork at the submission stage -- see who is actually interested in making an offer before you start approaching authors and whatnot otherwise you'll go mad!]

Additionally, agents don't ALWAYS schedule author calls with interested editors (often the letters they send speak for themselves and there aren't really questions to hash out), but if you feel like you really want to talk to somebody before you decide, particularly if there are sensitive issues of identity in your work, etc, tell your agent you'd like a call. You will hopefully be able to gauge their demeanor, level of sensitivity, what they love about your book, what things they want to CHANGE about your book, where they see your book in the marketplace, and all that good stuff, which will HOPEFULLY help you feel that you are in great hands and they really "get it." OR, help you realize "nope, this would not be a good home for this book."

There are no guarantees about anything of course, but this is the best way I know to proceed.

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chivalry-2-hack-4h · 2 years

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Chivalry 2 - Wikipedia

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 Chivalry 2 is the much-awaited successor to the original Chivalry that was released in The multiplayer hack and slash game is developed by Torn Banner Studios and published by Tripwire Interactive. Based on Unreal Engine 4, the game was received positively by both players and critiques. However, as time passed by, bugs and glitches surfaced that sometimes made the game unplayable. While some complained that the in-game Archers were overpowered , others said they could not queue up with friends since the invite system was not working. Now, many are reporting several issues with the game. Some Chivalry 2 players say they are getting anti-cheat authentication warnings and are getting kicked in the middle of the game. However, the issue only seems to affect console users right now. Has anybody else received this message and is it what I think it is, an accusation of cheating? Was playing a march on PS4 and it was a really good match but I was chasing someone down and attacking them and got kicked and got that message. Players are reporting that the update has reset all their stats like number of matches played, won, and their KDA. Is this intended and done to everyone else? Or something thats happened unintentionally? Had this happened to anyone else? Last but not the least, it looks like Chivalry 2 is crashing on the PlayStation 5. The bug has frustrated many and made the game unplayable. My ping is usually between 10 and 20 but the server side lag is so bad I cant judge when to counter or parry a swing and I also get hit by people that are mid-swing or just starting to swing there weapons. Was enjoying the game until the latest patch. At random the game crashes and asks if I want to send a report. Is anyone else experiencing this? I play on PS5 Source. All the aforementioned issues including have surfaced after the recent Fight Knight Post-Launch update. Fortunately, the developers have acknowledged all the issues and said they are trying to find fixes for the same. Fight Knight Post-Launch Update: There have been a few critical and complex issues that we have run up against and we want to let the community know that we are aware of these issues and are in the process of developing solutions to address them. We hope Torn Banner Studios fix the Chivalry 2 issues as soon as possible so players can start playing the game once again. When they do, we will update this article so make sure you keep an eye out on this space. However, some OOM crashes may still occur. Note : We have more such stories in our dedicated Gaming Section so be sure to follow them as well. Featured image source: Chivalry 2. Want to know more about us? Head here. Previous article. Next article. My fascination with technology and computers goes back to the days of Windows XP. Since then, I have been tinkering with OS, mobile phones, and other things. When I am not working on anything, you will find me enjoying video games on some Discord server. Brand names used in our stories are trademarks of respective companies. New updates are being added at the bottom of this story……. Original story published on October 29, follows: Chivalry 2 is the much-awaited successor to the original Chivalry that was released in Source Was playing a march on PS4 and it was a really good match but I was chasing someone down and attacking them and got kicked and got that message. Source My ping is usually between 10 and 20 but the server side lag is so bad I cant judge when to counter or parry a swing and I also get hit by people that are mid-swing or just starting to swing there weapons. Source We hope Torn Banner Studios fix the Chivalry 2 issues as soon as possible so players can start playing the game once again. Source Note : We have more such stories in our dedicated Gaming Section so be sure to follow them as well. Tags : Chivalry 2 , Chivalry 2 anti cheat authentication warning , Chivalry 2 crashing on PS5 , Chivalry 2 invisible bots , Chivalry 2 stats resetting. Share :. Next article Several Google News publishers missing featured images on some articles, issue escalated. Facebook Twitter Feed.

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eiirisworkshop · 3 years

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The Fanfic Author's Guide to Metatext

(As Used on Ao3) by Eiiri

Also available as a PDF here. This thing is 13,000 words. The PDF is recommended.

Intro: What is Metatext?

Metatext is everything we fanfic authors post along with our story that is not the story itself: title, tags, summary, author's notes, even the rating.

It is how we communicate to potential readers what they're signing themselves up for if they choose to read our story, how we let them make informed decisions regarding which fics they want to read, how we get their interest and, frequently, how they find our story in the first place. A lot of metatext acts as a consent mechanism for readers, it's the informed part of informed consent.

Since most of us who write fanfic also read it, we understand how important this is! But, for the most part, no one ever teaches us how to use metatext; we have to pick it up by osmosis. That makes it hard to learn how to use it well, we all suck at it when we first start out, and some of us may go years without learning particular conventions that seem obvious to others in our community. This creates frustration for everybody.

Enter this guide!

This is meant to be a sort of handbook for fic writers, particularly those of us who post on Archive of Our Own, laying out and explaining the established metatext conventions already in use in our community so we (and our readers!) are all on the same page. It will also provide some best-practices tips.

The point is to give all of us the tools to communicate with our audience as clearly and effectively as possible, so the people who want to read a story like ours can find it and recognize it as what they're looking for, those who don't want to read a story like ours can easily tell it's not their cup of tea and avoid it, nobody gets hurt, and everybody has fun—including us!

Now that we know what we're talking about, let's get on with the guide! The following content sections appear in the order one is expected to provide each kind of metatext when posting a fic on Ao3, but first….

Warning!

This is a guide for all authors on Ao3. As such, it mentions subject matter and kinds of fic that you personally might hate or find disgusting, but which are allowed under the Archive's terms of use. There are no graphic descriptions or harsh language in the guide itself, but it does acknowledge the existence of fic you may find distasteful and explains how to approach metatext for such fics.

Some sexual terminology is used in an academic context.

A note from the author:

This guide reflects the conventions of the English-language fanfiction community circa 2021. Conventions may differ in other language communities, and although many of our conventions have been in place for decades (praise be to our Star Trek loving foremothers) fanfiction now exists primarily in the realm of internet fandom where things tend to change rather quickly, so some conventions in this guide may die out while other new conventions, not covered in this guide, arise.

This is not official or in any way produced by the Archive of Our Own (Ao3), and though some actual site rules are mentioned, it is not a rulebook. Primarily, it is a descriptivist take on how the userbase uses metatext to communicate amongst ourselves, provided in the interest of making that communication easier and more transparent for everyone, especially newer users.

Contents

How To Use This Guide Ratings Archive Warnings Fandom Tags Category Relationship Tags Character Tags Additional Tags Titles Summaries Author's Notes Series and Chapters Parting Thoughts

How To Use This Guide

Well, read it. Or have it read to you.

This isn't a glossary, it's a handbook, and it's structured more like an academic paper or report, but there's lots and lots of examples in it!

Many of these examples are titles of real media and the names of characters from published media, or tags quoted directly from Ao3 complete with punctuation and formatting.

Some examples are more generic and use the names Alex, Max, Sam, Chris, Jamie, and Tori for demonstration purposes. In other generic examples, part of an example tag or phrase may be sectioned off with square brackets to show where in that tag or phrase you would put the appropriate information to complete it. This will look something like “Top [Character A]” where you would fill in a character's name.

This guide presumes that you know the basics of how to use Ao3, at least from the perspective of reading fic. If you don't, much of this guide may be difficult to understand and will be much less helpful to you, though not entirely useless.

Ratings

Most fanfic hosting sites provide ratings systems that work a lot like the ratings on movies and videogames.

Ao3's system has four ratings:

General

Teen

Mature

Explicit

These seem like they should be pretty self-explanatory, and the site's own official info pop-up (accessible by clicking the question mark next to the section prompt) gives brief, straightforward descriptions for each of them.

Even so, many writers have found ourselves staring at that dropdown list, thinking about what we've written, and wondering what's the right freaking rating for this? How do I know if it's appropriate for “general audiences” or if it needs to be teen and up? What's the difference between Mature and Explicit?

The best way to figure it out is often to think about your fic in comparison to mainstream media.

General is your average Disney or Dreamworks movie, Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon shows, video games like Mario, Kirby, and Pokemon.

There may be romance, but no sexual content or discussion. Scary things might happen and people might get hurt, but violence is non-graphic and usually mild. Adults may be shown drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco, and some degree of intoxication may be shown (usually played for laughs and not focused on), but hard drug use is generally not shown or discussed. There is little to no foul language written out and what language there may be is mild, though harsher swears may be implied by narration. There are no explicit F-bombs or slurs.

Teen is more like a Marvel movie, most network television shows (things like The Office, Supernatural, or Grey's Anatomy), video games like Final Fantasy, Five Nights at Freddie's, and The Sims.

There might be some sex and sexual discussion, but nothing explicit is shown—things usually fade to black or are leftimplied. More intense danger, more severe injuries described in greater detail, and a higher level of violence may be present. Substance use may be discussed and intoxication shown, but main characters are unlikely to be shown doing hard drugs. Some swearing and other harsh language may be present, possibly including an F-bomb or two. In longer works, that might mean an F-bomb every few chapters.

Mature is, in American terms, an R-rated movie* like Deadpool, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Exorcist, and Schindler's List; certain shows from premium cable networks or streaming services like Game of Thrones, Shameless, Breaking Bad, and Black Sails; videogames like Bioshock, Assassin's Creed, Grand Theft Auto, and The Witcher.

Sex may be shown and it might be fairly explicit, but it's not as detailed or graphic or as much the focus of the work as it would be if it were porn. Violence, danger, and bodily harm may be significant and fairly graphic. Most drug use is fair game. Swearing and harsh language may be extensive.

Explicit is, well, extremely explicit. This is full on porn, the hardcore horror movies, and snuff films.

Sex is highly detailed and graphic. Violence and injury is highly detailed and graphic. Drug use and its effects may be highly detailed and graphic. Swearing and harsh language may be extreme, including extensive use of violent slurs.

Please note that both Mature and Explicit fics are intended for adult audiences only, but that does not mean a teenaged writer isn't going to produce fics that should be rated M or E. Ratings should reflect the content of the fic, not the age of the author.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to choose any of these ratings; Ao3 has a “Not Rated” option, but for purposes of search results and some other functions, Not Rated fics are treated by the site as Explicit, just in case, which means they end up hidden from a significant portion of potential readers. It really is in your best interest as a writer who presumably wants people to see their stories, to select a rating. It helps readers judge if yours is the kind of story they want right now, too.

Rating a fic is a subjective decision, there is some grey area in between each level. If you're not quite sure where your fic falls, best practice is to go with the more restrictive rating.

*(Equivalent to an Australian M15+ or R18+, Canadian 14A, 18A or 18+, UK 15 or 18, German FSK 16 or FSK 18.)

Warnings

Ao3 uses a set of standard site-wide Archive Warnings to indicate that a work contains subject matter that falls into one or more of a few categories that some readers are likely to want to avoid. Even when posting elsewhere, it's courteous to include warnings of this sort.

These warnings are:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Major Character Death

Rape/Non-Con

Underage

Just like with the ratings, the site provides an info-pop up that explains what each warning is for. They're really exactly what it says on the tin: detailed descriptions of violence, injury, and gore; the death of a character central to canon or tothe story being told; non-consensual sex i.e. rape; and depictions of underage sex, which the site defines as under the age of 18 for humans—Ao3 doesn't care if your local age of consent or majority is lower than that.

In addition to the four standard warnings above, the warnings section has two other choices:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings

These do not mean the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. “No Archive Warnings Apply” means that absolutely nothing in your fic falls into any of the four standard warning categories. “Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings” means that you the author are opting out of the warning system; your fic could potentially contain things that fall into any and all of the four standard warning categories.

There's nothing wrong with selecting Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings! It may mean that some readers will avoid your fic because they're not sure it's safe for them, and you might need to use more courtesy tags than you otherwise would (we'll talk about courtesy tags later), but that's okay! Opting out of the warning system can be a way to avoid spoilers,* and is also good for when you're just not sure if what you've written deserves one of the Archive warnings. In that case, the best practice is to select either the warning it might deserve or Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings, then provide additional information in other tags, the summary, or an initial author's note.

Unless you're opting out of using the warning system, select all the warnings that apply to your fic, if any of them do. So if a sixteen year old main character has consensual sex then gets killed in an accident that you've written out in excruciating detail, that fic gets three out of the four standard warnings: Underage, Major Character Death, and Graphic Depictions Of Violence.

*(Fandom etiquette generally favors thorough tagging and warning over avoiding spoilers. It doesn't ruin the experience of a story to have a general sense of what's going to happen. If it did, we wouldn't all keep reading so many “there was only one bed” fics.)

Fandom Tags

What fandom or fandoms is your fic for? You definitely know what you wrote it for, but that doesn't mean it's obvious what to tag it as.

Sometimes, it is obvious! You watched a movie that isn't based on anything, isn't part of a series, and doesn't have any spinoffs, tie-ins or anything else based on it. You wrote a fic set entirely within the world of this movie. You put this movie as the fandom for your fic. Or maybe you read a book and wrote a fic for it, and there is a movie based on the book, but the movie is really different and you definitely didn't use anything that's only in the movie. You put the book as the fandom for your fic.

All too often, though, it's not that clear.

What if you wrote a fic for something where there's a movie based on a book, but the movie's really different, and you've used both things that are only in the movie and things that are only in the book? In that case you either tag your fic as both the movie and the book, or see if the fandom has an “all media types” tag and use that instead of the separate tags. If the fandom doesn't have an “all media types” tag yet, you can make one! Just type it in.

“All media types” fandom tags are also useful for cases where there are lots of inter-related series, like Star Wars; there are several tellings of the story in different media but they're interchangeable or overlap significantly, like The Witcher; or the fandom has about a zillion different versions so it's very hard, even impossible, to say which ones your fic does and doesn't fit, like Batman. Use your best judgement as to whether you need to include a more specific fandom tag such as “Batman (Movies 1989-1997)” alongside the “all media types” fandom tag, but try to avoid including very many. The point of the “all media types” tag is to let you leave off the specific tags for every version.

In a situation where one piece of media has a spinoff, maybe several spinoffs, and you wrote a fic that includes things from more than one of them, you might want use the central work's “& related fandoms” tag. For example, the “Doctor Who & Related Fandoms” tag gets used for fics that include things from a combination of any era of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

And don't worry, from the reader-side of the site the broadest fandom tags are prioritized. The results page for an “all media types” or “& related fandoms” search includes works tagged with the more specific sub-tags for that fandom, the browse-by-fandom pages show the broadest tag for each fandom included, and putting a fandom into the search bar presumes the broadest tag for that fandom. A search for “Star Wars - All Media Types” will pull up work that only has a subtag for that fandom, like “The Mandalorian (TV).” You don't have to put every specific fandom subtag for people to find your fic.

If you wrote a fic for something that's an adaptation of an older work—especially an older work that's been adapted a lot, like Sherlock Holmes or The Three Musketeers—it can be hard to know how you should tag it. The best choice is to put the adaptation as the fandom, for instance “Sherlock (TV),” then, if you're also using aspects of the older source work that aren't in the adaptation, also put a broad fandom tag such as “Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms.” Do not tag it as being fic for the source work—in our Sherlock example that would be tagging it “Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle”—unless you are crossing over the source work and the adaptation. Otherwise, the specific fandom subtag for the source work ends up clogged with fic for the adaptation, which really is a different thing.

By the same token, fic for the source work shouldn't be tagged as being for the adaptation, or the adaptation's subtag will get clogged.

The same principle applies to fandoms that have been rebooted. Don't tag fic for the reboot as being for the original, or fic for the original as being for the reboot. Don't tag a fic as being for both unless the reboot and original are actually interacting. Use an “& related fandoms” tag for the original if your fic for the reboot includes some aspects of the original that weren't carried over but you haven't quite written a crossover between the two. Good examples of these situations can be seen with “Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)” vs. “Star Trek: The Original Series,” and “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)” vs. “She-Ra: Princess Of Power (1985).”

Usually, this kind of mistagging as a related fandom happens when someone writes a fic for something that is or has a reboot, spinoff, or adaptation, but they're only familiar with one of the related pieces of media, and they mistakenly presume the fandoms are the same or interchangeable because they just don't know the difference. It's an honest mistake and it doesn't make you a bad or fake fan to not know, but it can be frustrating for readers who want fic for one thing and find the fandom tag full of fic for something else.

In order to avoid those kinds of issues, best practice is to assume fandoms are not interchangeable no matter how closely related they are, and to default to using a tag pair of the most-specific-possible sub-fandom tag + the broadest possible fandom tag when posting a fic you're not entirely sure about, for instance “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: Enterprise.”

The Marvel megafandom has its own particular tagging hell going on. Really digging into and trying to make sense of that entire situation would require its own guide, but we can go through some general tips.

There is a general “Marvel” fandom tag and tags for both “The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom” and “The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types.” Most of us who write Marvel fic are working with a cherry picked combination of canons from the MCU, various comics runs, both timelines of X-Men movies, and possibly several decades worth of cartoons. That's what these tags are for.

If your cherry picked Marvel fic is more X-Men than Avengers, go for the “X-Men - All Media Types” tag.

If you are primarily working with MCU canon, use the MCU specific tags rather than “all media types” and add specific tags for individual comics runs—like Earth 616 or the Fraction Hawkeye comics—if you know you're lifting particular details from the comics. If you're just filling in gaps in MCU canon with things that are nebulously “from the comics” don't worry about tagging for that, it's accepted standard practice in the fandom at this point, use a broader tag along with your MCU-specific tag if you want to.

Same general idea for primarily movie-verse X-Men fics. Use the movie-specific tags.

If your fic mostly draws from the comics, use the comics tags. If you're focusing on an individual run, show, or movie series rather than an ensemble or large swath of the megafranchise, tag for that and leave off the broader fandom tags.

Try your best to minimize the number of fandom tags on your Marvel work. Ideally, you can get it down to two or three. Even paring it down as much as you can you might still end up with about five. If you're in the double digits, take another look to see if all the fandom tags you've included are really necessary, or if some of them are redundant or only there to represent characters who are in the fic but that the fic doesn't focus on. Many readers tend to search Marvel fics by character or pairing tags, it's more important that you're thorough there. For the fandom tags it's more important that you're clear.

If you write real person fiction, you need to tag it as an RPF fandom. Fic about actors who are in a show together does not belong on the fandom tag for that show. There are separate RPF fandom tags for most shows and film franchises. Much like the adaptation/source and reboot/original situations discussed earlier, a fic should really only be tagged with both a franchise's RPF tag and its main tag if something happens like the actors—or director or writer!—falling into the fictional world or meeting their characters.

Of course, not all RPF is about actors. Most sports have RPF tags, there are RPF tags for politics from around the world and for various historical settings, the fandom tags for bands are generally presumed to be RPF tags, and there is a general Real Person Fiction tag.

In order to simplify things for readers, it's best practice to use the general Real Person Fiction tag in addition to your fandom-specific tag. You may even want to put “RPF” as a courtesy tag in the Additional Tags section, too. This is because Ao3 isn't currently set up to recognize RPF as the special flavor of fic that it is in the same way that the site recognizes crossovers as special, so it can be very difficult to either seek out or avoid RPF since it's scattered across hundreds of different fandom tags.

On the subject of crossovers—they can make fandom tagging even more daunting. Even for a crossover with lots of fandoms involved, though, you just have to follow the same guidelines as to tag a single-fandom work for each fandom in the crossover. The tricky part is figuring out if what you wrote is really a crossover, or just an AU informed by another fandom—we'll talk about that later.

There are some cases where it's really hard to figure out what fandom something belongs to, like if you wrote a fanfic of someone else's fanfic, theirs is an AU and yours is about their OC, not any of the characters from canon. What do you do?! Well, you do not tag it as being a fanfic for the same thing theirs was. Put the title of their fic (or name of their series) as the fandom for your fic, attributed to their Ao3 handle just like any other fandom is attributed to its author. Explain the situation in either the summary or the initial author's note. Also, ask the author's permission before posting something like this.

What if you wrote a story about your totally original D&D character? The fandom is still D&D, you want the “Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)” tag.

What if there's not a fandom tag on the Archive yet for what you wrote? Not a problem! You can type in a new one if you're the first person to post something for a particular fandom. Do make sure, though, that the fandom isn't just listed by a different name than you expect. Many works that aren't originally in English—including anime—are listed by their original language title or a direct translation first, and sometimes a franchise or series's official name might not be what you personally call it, for instance many people think of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series as The Golden Compass series, so it's best to double check.

What if you wrote an entirely new original story that's not based on anything? Excellent job, that takes a lot of work, but that probably doesn't belong on Ao3! The Archive is primarily meant as a repository for fannish content, but in a few particular circumstances things we'd consider Original Work may be appropriate content for the Archive as well. Double check the Archive's Terms of Service FAQ and gauge if what you wrote falls under the scope of what is allowed. If what you wrote really doesn't fit here, post it somewhere else or try to get it published if you feel like giving it a shot.

Category

What Ao3 means by category is “does this fic focus on sex or romance, and if so what combination of genders are involved in that sex or romance?”

The category options are:

F/F

F/M

Gen

M/M

Multi

Other

The F/F, F/M, and M/M categories are for stories focused on pairings of two women, a woman and a man, and two men, respectively. These refer to sexual and/or romantic pairings.

The Other category is for stories focused on (sexual and/or romantic) pairings where one or both partners are not strictly male or female, such as nonbinary individuals, people from cultures with gender systems that don't match to the Western man-woman system, and nonhuman characters for whom biological sex works differently or is nonexistent, including aliens, robots, and inanimate objects or abstract concepts. There are some problems with treating nonbinary humans, eldritch tentacle monsters, sexless androids, and wayward container ships as all the same category, but it's the system we currently have to work with. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Multi is for stories in which several (sexual and/or romantic) relationships are focused on or which focus on relationships with multiple partners, including cases of polyamory, serial monogamy, strings of hookups with different people, and orgies. A fic will also show as “Multi” if you, the author, have selected more than one category for the fic, even if none of those are the Multi category. Realistically, the Archive needs separate “Multiple Categories” and “Poly” options, but for now we have to work with this system in which the two are combined. Use Additional Tags to clarify the situation.

Gen is for stories that do not contain or are not focused on sex or romance. Romance may be present in a gen fic but it's going to be in the background. While rare, there is such a thing as a sexually explicit gen fic—solo masturbation which does not feature fantasizing about another character is explicit gen fic; a doctor character seeing a series of patients with sex-related medical needs following an orgy may qualify if the orgy is not shown and the doctor is being strictly professional—but such fic needs to be rated, otherwise tagged, and explained carefully in the summary and/or author's note.

Much like the warnings section, category is a “select all that apply” situation. Use your best judgement. For a fic about a polyamorous relationship among a group of women, it's entirely appropriate to tag it as both F/F and Multi. A poly fic with a combination of men and women in the relationship could be shown as both M/M and F/M, Multi, or all three. A fic that focuses equally on one brother and his husband and the other brother and his wife should be tagged both M/M and F/M, and could be tagged as Multi but you might decided not to just to be clear that there's no polyamory going on. If you wrote a fic about two characters who are both men in canon, but you wrote one of them as nonbinary, you could tag it M/M, Other, or both depending on what you feel is representative and respectful.

When dealing with trans characters, whether they're trans in canon or you're writing them as such, the category selection should match the character's gender. If there's a character who is a cis woman in canon, but who you're writing as a trans man, you categorize the fic based on his being a man. If there's a character who is a cis man in canon, but whom you're writing as a trans man, he is still a man and the fic should be categorized accordingly. When dealing with nonbinary characters the fic should really be classed as Other though, by convention, fics about characters who are not nonbinary in canon may be classed based on the character's canon gender as well or instead. When dealing with gender swapped characters—i.e. a canonically cis male superhero who you're writing as a cis woman—class the fic using the gender you wrote her with, not the gender he is in canon.

Most of the time, gen fics should not be categorized jointly with anything else because a fic should only be categorized based on the ships it focuses on, and a gen fic should not be focusing on a ship in the first place.*

*(One of the few circumstances in which it might make sense to class a fic as both gen and something else is when writing about Queerplatonic Relationships, but that is a judgement call and depends on the fic.)

Relationship Tags

The thing about relationship tagging that people most frequently misunderstand or just don't know is the difference between “Character A/Character B” and “Character A & Character B.”

Use a “/” for romantic or sexual relationships, such as spouses, people who are dating, hookups, and friends with benefits. Use “&” for platonic or familial relationships, such as friends, siblings, parents with their kids, coworkers, and deeply connected mortal enemies who are not tragically in love.

This is where we get the phrase “slash fic.” Originally, that meant any fic focused on a romantic paring, but since so much of the romantic fic being produced was about pairs of men, “slash fic” came to mean same-sex pairings, especially male same-sex pairings. Back in earlier days of fandom, pre-Ao3 and even pre-internet, there was a convention that when writing out a different-sex pairing, you did so in man/woman order, while same-sex pairings were done top/bottom. Some authors, especially those who have been in the fic community a long time, may still do this, but the convention has not been in consistent, active use for many years, so you don't have to worry about putting the names in the “correct” order. Part of why that died out is we, as a community, have gotten less strict and more nuanced in our understandings of sex and relationships, we're writing non-penetrative sex more than we used to, and we're writing multi-partner relationships and sex more than we used to, so strictly delineating “tops” and “bottoms” has gotten less important and less useful.

The convention currently in use on Ao3 is that the names go in alphabetical order for both “/” and “&” relationships. In most cases, the Archive uses the character's full name instead of a nickname or just a given name, like James "Bucky" Barnes instead of just Bucky or James. We'll talk more about conventions for how to input character names in the Characters section. The Archive will give you suggestions as you type—if one of them fits what you mean but is slightly different from how you were typing it, for instance it's in a different order, please use the tag suggested! Consistency in tags across users helps the site work more smoothly for everybody.

This is really not the place for ship nicknames like Puckleberry, Wolfstar, or Ineffable Wives. Use the characters' names.

Now that you know how to format the relationship tag to say what you mean, you have to figure out what relationships in your fic to tag for.

The answer is you tag the relationships that are important to the story you're telling, the ones you spend time and attention following, building up, and maybe even breaking down. Tagging for a ship is not a promise of a happy ending for that pair; you don't have to limit yourself to tagging only the end-game ships if you're telling a story that's more complicated than “they get together and live happily ever after.” That said, you should generally list the main ship—the one you focus on the most—first on the list, and that will usually be the end-game ship. You should also use Additional Tags, the summary, and author's notes to make it clear to readers if your fic does not end happily for a ship you've tagged. Otherwise readers will assume that a fic tagged as being about a ship will end well for that ship, because that's what usually happens, and they'll end up disappointed and hurt, possibly feeling tricked or lied to, when your fic doesn't end well for that ship

You don't have to, and honestly shouldn't, tag for every single relationship that shows up in your fic at all. A character's brief side fling mentioned in passing, or a relationship between two background characters should not be listed under the Relationship tag section. You can list them in the format “minor Character A/Character C” or “Character C/Character D – mentions of” in the Additional Tags section if you want to, or just tag “Minor or Background Relationship(s)” under either the Relationship tag section or in the Additional Tags section.

There are two main reasons to not tag all those minor relationships. The first is to streamline your tags, which makes them clearer and more readable, and therefore more useful. The second reason is because certain ships are far more common as minor or background relationships than as the focus of a work, so tagging all your non-focus focus ships leads to the tags for these less popular ships getting clogged with stories they appear in, but that are not about them. That is, of course, very frustrating for readers who really want to read stories that focus on these ships.

If your fic contains a major relationship between a canon character and an OC, reader-insert, or self-insert, tag it as such. The archive already has /Original Character, /Reader, /You, and /Me tags for most characters in most fandoms. If such a relationship tag isn't already in use, type it in yourself. There are OC/OC tags, too, some of which specify gender, some of which do not. All the relationship tags that include OCs stack the gender-specific versions of the tags under the nongendered ones. Use these tags as appropriate.

For group relationships, both polycules and multi-person friendships, you “/” or “&” all the names involved in alphabetical order, so Alex/Max/Sam are dating while Chris & Jamie & Tori are best friends. For a poly situation where not everyone is dating each other you should tag it something like “Alex/Max, Alex/Sam” because Alex is dating both Max and Sam, but Max and Sam are not romantically or sexually involved with each other. Use your judgement as to whether you still want to include the Alex/Max/Sam trio tag, and whether you should also use a “Sam & Max” friendship tag.

Generally, romantic “/” type relationships are emphasized over “&” type relationships in fic. It is more important that you tag your “/”s thoroughly and accurately than that you tag your “&”s at all. This is because readers are far more likely to either be looking for or be squicked by particular “/” relationships than they are “&” relationships. You can tag the same pair of characters as both / and & if both their romance and their friendship is important to the story, but a lot of people see this as redundant. If you're writing incest fic, use the / tag for the pair not the & tag and put a courtesy tag for “incest” in the Additional Tags section; this is how readers who do not want to see incestuous relationships avoid that material.

Queerplatonic Relationships, Ambiguous Relationships, Pre-Slash, and “Slash If You Squint” are all frequently listed with both the “/” and “&” forms of the pairing; use your best judgement as to whether one or the other or both is most appropriate for what you've written and clarify the nature of the relationship in your Additional Tags.

Overall, list your “/” tags first, then your “&” tags.

Character Tags

Tagging your characters is a lot like tagging your relationships. Who is your fic about? That's who you put in your character tags.

You don't have to and really should not tag every single background character who shows up for just a moment in the story, for pretty much the same reasons you shouldn't tag background relationships. We don't want to clog less commonly focused on characters' tags with stories they don't feature prominently in.

You do need to tag the characters included in your Relationship tags.

A character study type of fic might only have one character you need to tag for. Romantic one shots frequently only have two. Longfics and fics with big ensemble casts can easily end up with a dozen characters or more who really do deserve to be tagged for.

Put them in order of importance. This doesn't have to be strict hierarchal ranking, you can just arrange them into groups of “main characters,” “major supporting characters,” and “minor supporting characters.” Nobody less than a minor supporting character should be tagged. Even minor supporting characters show up for more than one line.

If everyone in the fic is genuinely at the same level of importance (which does happen, especially with small cast fics), then order doesn't really matter. You can arrange them by order of appearance or alphabetically by name if you want to be particularly neat about it.

Do tag your OCs! Some people love reading about OCs and want to be able to find them; some people can't stand OCs and want to avoid them at all costs; most people are fine with OCs sometimes, but might have to be in the mood for an OC-centric story or only be comfortable with OCs in certain contexts. Regardless, though, Character tags are here to tell readers who the story is about, and that includes new faces. Original Characters are characters and if they're important to the story, they deserve to be tagged for just like canon characters do.

There are tags for “Original Character(s),” “Original Male Character(s),” and “Original Female Character(s).” Use these tags! If you have OCs you're going to be using frequently in different stories, type up a character tag in the form “[OC's Name] – Original Character” and use that in addition to the generic OC tags.

Also tag “Reader,” “You,” or “Me” as a character if you've written a reader- or self-insert.

You can use the “Minor Characters” tag to wrap up everybody, both OC and canon, who doesn't warrant their own character tag. Remember, though, that this tag is also used to refer to minor canon characters who may not have their own official names.

Just like when tagging for relationships, the convention when tagging for characters is to use their full name. The suggestions the Archive gives you as you type will help you use the established way of referring to a given character.

Characters who go by more than one name usually have their two most used names listed together as one tag with the two names separated by a vertical bar like “Andy | Andromache of Scythia.” This also gets used sometimes for characters who have different names in an adaptation than in the source text, or a different name in the English-language localization of a work than in the original language. For character names from both real-world and fictional languages and cultures that put family or surname before the given name—like the real Japanese name Takeuchi Naoko or the made up Bajoran name Kira Nerys—that order is used when tagging, even if you wrote your fic putting the given name first.

Some characters' tags include the fandom they're from in parentheses after their name like “Connor (Detroit: Become Human).” This is mostly characters with ordinary given names like Connor and no canon surname, characters who have the same full name as a character in another fandom, such as Billy Flynn the lawyer from the musical Chicago and Billy Flynn the serial killer played by Tim Curry in Criminal Minds, and characters based on mythological, religious, or historical figures or named for common concepts such as Lucifer, Loki, Amethyst, Death, and Zero that make appearances in multiple fandoms.

Additional Tags

Additional Tags is one of the most complicated, and often the longest, section of metatext we find ourselves providing when we post fic. It's also the one that gives our readers the greatest volume of information.

That, of course, is what makes it so hard for us to do well.

It can help to break down Additional Tags into three main functions of tag: courtesy tags, descriptive tags, and personal tags.

Courtesy tags serve as extensions of the rating and warning systems. They can help clarify the rating, provide more information about the Archive Warnings you've used or chosen not to use, and give additional warnings to tell readers there are things in this fic that may be distasteful, upsetting, or triggering but that the Archive doesn't have a standard warning for.

Descriptive tags give the reader information about who's in this fic, what kind of things happen, what tropes are in play, and what the vibe is, as well as practical information about things like format and tense.

Personal tags tell the readers things about us, the author, our process, our relationship to our fic, and our thoughts at the time of posting.

It doesn't really matter what order you put these tags in, but it is best practice to try to clump them: courtesy tags all together so it's harder for a reader to miss an important one, ship-related info tags together, character-related info tags together, etc.

There are tons and tons of established tags on Ao3, and while it's totally fine, fun, and often necessary to make up your own tags, it's also important to use established tags that fit your fic. For one thing, using established tags makes life easier for the tag wranglers behind the scenes. Using a new tag you just made up that means the same thing as an established tag makes more work for the tag wranglers. We like the tag wranglers, they're all volunteers, and they're largely responsible for the search and sorting features being functional. Be kind to the tag wranglers.

For basically the same reasons, using established tags makes it easier for readers to find your fic. If a reader either searches by a tag or uses filters on another search to “Include” that tag, and you didn't use that tag, your fic will not show up for them even if what you wrote is exactly what they're looking for. Established tags can be searched by exactly the same way as you search by fandom or pairing, your off the cuff tags cannot.

Let's talk about some well-known established tags and common tag types, divvied up by main function.

Courtesy

A lot of courtesy tags are specific warnings like “Dubious Consent,” “Incest,” “Drug Use,” “Extremely Underage,” “Toxic Relationship,” and “Abuse.” Many of these have even more specific versions such as “Recreational Drug Use” and “Nonconsensual Drug Use,” or “Mildly Dubious Consent” and “Extremely Dubious Consent.”

Giving details about what, if any, drugs are used or mentioned, specifying what kinds of violence or bodily harm are discussed or depicted, details about age differences or power-imbalanced relationships between characters who date or have sex, discussion or depictions of suicide, severe or terminal illness, or mental health struggles is useful. It helps give readers a clear sense of what they'll encounter in your fic and decide if they're up for it.

One the most useful courtesy warning tags is “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” which basically means “there are things in this fic which are really screwed up and may be disturbing, read at your own risk, steer clear if you're not sure.” This tag—like all courtesy warnings, really—is a show of good faith, by using it you are being a responsible, and thoughtful member of the fanfic community by giving readers the power and necessary information to make their own informed decisions about what they are and are not comfortable reading.

Saying to “Heed the tags” is quite self-explanatory and, if used, should be the last or second to last tag so it's easy to spot. Remember, though, that “Heed the tags” isn't useful if your tags aren't thorough and clear.

“Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is one of only things that should ever go after “Heed the tags.” If you use this, your additional warnings need to go in the author's note at the very beginning of the fic, not the one at the end of the first chapter. If your additional warnings write up is going to be very long because it's highly detailed, then it can go at the bottom of the chapter with a note at the beginning indicating that the warnings are at the bottom. Some authors give an abbreviated or vague set of warnings in the initial note, then longer, highly detailed, spoilery warnings in the end note. It's best to make it as simple and straightforward as possible for readers to access warnings.

Tagging with “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat,” “Heed the tags,” or “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” is not a substitute for thorough and appropriate courtesy tagging. These are extra reminders to readers to look closely at the other warnings you've given.

While most courtesy tags are warnings, some are assurances like “No Lesbians Die” or “It's Not As Bad As It Sounds.” A fic tagged for rape or dub-con may get a tag assuring that the consent issues are not between the characters in the main ship; or a fic with a premise that sounds likely to involve lack of consent but actually doesn't may get a tag that it's “NOT rape/non-con.” A tag like “Animal Death” may be immediately followed by a freeform tag assuring that the animal that dies is not the protagonist's beloved horse.

Descriptive

There are a few general kinds of descriptive tags including character-related, ship-related, temporal, relation-to-canon, trope-related, smut details, and technical specifications.

Many character- and ship-related tags simply expand on the Character and Relationship tags we've already talked about. This is usually the place to specify details about OCs and inserts, such as how a reader-insert is gendered.

When it comes to character-related tags, one of the most common types in use on Ao3 and in fandom at large is the bang-path. This is things like werewolf!Alex, trans!Max, top!Sam, kid!Jamie, and captain!Tori. Basically, a bang-path is a way of specifying a version of a character. We've been using this format for decades; it comes from the very first email systems used by universities in the earliest days of internet before the World Wide Web existed. It's especially useful for quickly and concisely explaining the roles of characters in an AU. Nowadays this is also one of the primary conventions for indicating who's top and who's bottom in a ship if that's information you feel the need to establish. The other current convention for indicating top/bottom is as non-bang-path character-related tags in the form “Top [Character A], Bottom [Character B].”

Other common sorts of character tags are things like “[Character A] Needs a Hug,” “Emotionally Constipated [Character B],” and “[Character C] is a Good Dad.”

Some character-related tags don't refer to a particular character by name, but tell readers something about what kinds of characters are in the fic. Usually, this indicates the minority status of characters and may indicate whether or not that minority status is canon, as in “Nonbinary Character,” “Canon Muslim Character,” “Deaf Character,” and “Canon Disabled Character.”

Down here in the tags is the place to put ship nicknames! This is also where to say things like “They're idiots your honor” or indicate that they're “Idiots in Love,” maybe both since “Idiots in Love” is an established searchable tag but “They're idiots your honor” isn't yet. If your fandom has catchphrases related to your ship, put that here if you want to.

If relevant, specify some things about the nature of relationships in your fic such as “Ambiguous Relationship,” “Queerplatonic Relationships,” “Polyamory,” “Friends With Benefits,” “Teacher-Student Relationship,” and so on. Not all fics need tags like these. Use your best judgement whether your current fic does.

Temporal tags indicate when your fic takes place. That can be things like “Pre-Canon” and “Post-Canon,” “Pre-War,” “Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “1996-1997 NHL season,” “Future Fic,” and so on. These tags may be in reference to temporal landmarks in canon, in the real world, or both depending on what's appropriate.

Some temporal tags do double duty by also being tags about the fic's relationship to canon. The Pre- and Post-Canon tags are like that.

Other relation-to-canon type tags are “Canon Compliant” for fics that fit completely inside the framework of canon without changing or contradicting anything, “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence” for fics that are compliant up to a certain point in canon, then veer off (maybe because you started writing the fic when the show was on season two but now it's at season four and you're not incorporating everything from the newer seasons, maybe a character died and you refuse to acknowledge that, maybe you just want to explore what might have happened if a particular scene had gone differently), and the various other Alternate Universe tags for everything from coffee shop AUs and updates to modern settings, to realities where everyone is a dragon or no one has their canon superpowers.

The established format for these tags is “Alternate Universe – [type],” but a few have irregular names as well, such as “Wingfic” for AUs in which characters who don't ordinarily have wings are written as having wings.

If you have written an AU, please tag clearly what it is! Make things easy on both the readers who are in the mood to read twenty royalty AUs in a row, the readers who are in the middle of finals week and the thought of their favorite characters suffering through exams in a college AU would destroy the last shred of their sanity but would enjoy watching those characters teach high school, and the readers who really just want to stick to the world of canon right now.

Admittedly, it can get a little confusing what AU tag or tags you need to describe what you've written since most of us have never had a fandom elder sit us down and explain what the AU tags mean. One common mix up is tagging things “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” when what's meant is “Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence.” The misunderstanding here is usually reading “Alternate Universe - Modern Setting” and thinking it means an alternate version of the canon universe that is set at the same time as the canon universe, but is different in some way. That's not how the tag is meant to be used, though.

The Modern Setting AU tag is specifically for fic set now (at approximately the same time period it was written), for media that's canonically set somewhere that is very much not the present of the real world. This can mean things set in the past (like Jane Austen), the future (like Star Trek), or a fantasy world entirely different from our own (like Lord of the Rings or Avatar: the Last Airbender). Fic for a canon that's set more or less “now” doesn't need the Modern Setting AU tag, even if the world of canon is different from our own. If you're removing those differences by putting fantasy or superhero characters in a world without magic or supersoldier serum, you might want the “Alternate Universe - No Powers” tag instead.

Some of the most fun descriptive tags are trope tags. This includes things like “Mutual Pining,” “Bed Sharing” for when your OTP gets to their hotel room to find There Was Only One Bed, “Fake Dating,” “Angst,” Fluff,” “Hurt/Comfort” and all its variants. Readers love tropes at least as much as we love writing them and want to be able to find their favorites. Everyone also has tropes they don't like and would rather avoid. Tagging them allows your fic to be filtered in and out by what major tropes you've used.

Explicit fics, and sometimes fics with less restrictive ratings, that contain sex usually have tags indicating details about the nature of the sexual encounter(s) portrayed and what sex acts are depicted. These are descriptive tags, but they also do double duty as courtesy tags. This is very much a situation in which tags are a consent mechanism; by thoroughly and clearly tagging your smut you are giving readers the chance to knowingly opt in or out of the experience you've written.

Most of the time, it's pretty easy to do basic tagging for sex acts—you know whether what you wrote shows Vaginal Sex, Anal Sex, or Non-penetrative Sex. You probably know the names for different kinds of Oral Sex you may have included. You might not know what to call Frottage or Intercrural Sex, though, even if you understand the concept and included the act in your fic. Sometimes there are tags with rectangle-square type relationships (all Blow Jobs are Oral Sex, but not all Oral Sex is a Blow Job) and you're not sure if you should tag for both—you probably should. Sometimes there are tags for overlapping, closely related, or very similar acts or kinks and you're not sure which to tag—that one's more of judgement call; do your best to use the tags that most closely describe what you wrote.

Tag for the kinks at play, if any, so readers can find what they're into and avoid what they're not. Tag for what genitalia characters have if it's nonobvious, including if there's Non-Human Genitalia involved. Tag your A/B/O, your Pon Farr, and your Tentacles, including whether it's Consentacles or Tentacle Rape.

Technical specification tags give information about aspects of the fic other than its narrative content. Most things on Ao3 are prose fiction so that's assumed to be the default, so anything else needs to be specified in tags. That includes Poetry, Podfics, things in Script Format, and Art. If it is a podfic, you should tag with the approximate length in minutes (or hours). If a fic is Illustrated (it has both words and visual art) tag for that.

Tag if your fic is a crossover or fusion. The difference, if you're not sure, is that in a crossover, two (or more) entire worlds from different media meet, whereas in a fusion, some aspects of one world, like the cast of characters, are combined with aspects of another, like the setting or magic system.

If the team of paranormal investigators from one show get in contact with the cast of aliens from another show, that's a crossover and you need to have all the media you're drawing from up in the Fandom tags. If you've given the cast of Hamlet physical manifestations of their souls in the form of animal companions like the daemons from His Dark Materials but nothing else from His Dark Materials shows up, that's a fusion, the Fandom tag should be “Hamlet - Shakespeare,” and you need the “Alternate Universe - Daemons” tag. If you've given the members of a boy band elemental magic powers like in Avatar: the Last Airbender, that can be more of a judgement call depending how much from Avatar you've incorporated into your story. If absolutely no characters or specific settings from Avatar show up, it's probably a fusion. Either way, if the boyband exists in real life, it needs to be tagged as RPF.

Tag if your fic is a Reader-Insert or Self-Insert.

You might want to tag for whether your fic is written with POV First, Second, or Third Person, and if it's Past Tense or Present Tense (or Future Tense, though that's extremely uncommon). For POV First Person fics that are not self-inserts, or POV Third Person fics that are written in third person limited, you may want to tag which character's POV is being shown. Almost all POV Second Person fics are reader-insert, so if you've written one that isn't, you should tag for who the “you” is.

A fic is “POV Outsider” if the character through whom the story is being conveyed is outside the situation or not familiar with the characters and context a reader would generally know from canon. The waitress who doesn't know the guy who just sat down in her diner is a monster hunter, and the guy stuck in spaceport because some hotshot captain accidentally locked down the entire space station, are both potential narrators for POV Outsider stories.

Other technical specifications can be tags for things like OCtober and Kinktober or fic bingo games. Tagging something as a Ficlet, One Shot, or Drabble is a technical specification (we're not going to argue right now over what counts as a drabble). Tagging for genre, like Horror or Fantasy, is too.

It's also good to tag accessibility considerations like “Sreenreader Friendly,” but make sure your fic definitely meets the needs of a given kind of accessibility before tagging it.

Personal

Even among personal tags there are established tags! Things like “I'm Sorry,” “The Author Regrets Nothing,” “The Author Regrets Everything,” and “I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping” are common ones. Tags about us and our relationship to the fic, such as “My First Work In This Fandom,” “Author is Not Religious,” and “Trans Porn By A Trans Author,” can help readers gauge what to expect from our fic. Of course, you are not at all obligated to disclose any personal information for any reason when posting your fic.

The “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag is common, but probably overused. Tagging is hard; very few of us have a natural feel for it even with lots of practice. It's not a completely useless tag because it can indicate to readers that you've probably missed some things you should have tagged for, so they should be extra careful; but it can also turn into a crutch, an excuse to not try, and therefore a sign to readers they can't trust your tagging job. Just do your best, and leave off the self depreciation. If you're really concerned about the quality of your tagging, consider putting in an author's note asking readers to let you know if there are any tags you should add.

You might want to let readers know your fic is “Not Beta Read” or, if you're feeling a little cheekier than that, say “No Beta We Die Like Men” or its many fandom-specific variants like the “No Beta We Die Like Robins” frequently found among Batman fics and “No beta we die like Sunset Curve” among Julie and The Phantoms fic. Don't worry, the Archive recognizes all of these as meaning “Not Beta Read.”

The Archive can be inconsistent about whether it stacks specific variants of Additional Tags under the broadest version of the tag like it does with Fandom tags, so best practice is usually to use both. You can double check by trying to search by a variant tag (or clicking on someone else's use of the variant); if the results page says the broader or more common form of the tag, those stack.

There's no such thing as the right number of tags. Some people prefer more tags and more detail, while other people prefer fewer more streamlined tags, and different fics have different things that need to be tagged for. There is, however, such a thing as too many tags. A tagblock that takes up the entire screen, or more, can be unreadable, at which point they are no longer useful. Focus on the main points and don't try to tag for absolutely everything. Use the “Additional Warnings In Author's Note” strategy if your courtesy tags are what's getting out of hand.

Tag for as much as you feel is necessary for readers to find your fic and understand what they're getting into if they decide to open it up.

A little bit of redundancy in tags is not a sin. In fact, slight redundancy is usually preferable to vagueness. Clear communication in tags is a cardinal virtue. Remember that tags serve a purpose, they're primarily a tool for sorting and filtering, and (unlike on some other sites like tumblr) they work, so it's best to keep them informative and try to limit rambling in the tags. Ramble at length in your author's notes instead!

Titles

Picking a title can be one of the most daunting and frustrating parts of posting a fic. Sometimes we just know what to call our fics and it's a beautiful moment. Other times we stare at that little input box for what feels like an eternity.

The good news is there's really no wrong way to select a title. Titles can be long or short, poetic or straight to the point. Song lyrics, idioms, quotes from literature or from the fic itself can be good ways to go.

Single words or phrases with meanings that are representative of the fic can be great. A lot of times these are well known terms or are easy enough to figure out like Midnight or Morning Glow, but if you find yourself using something that not a lot of people know what it means, like Chiaroscuro (an art style that uses heavy shadow and strong contrast between light and dark), Kintsukuroi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold), or Clusivity (the grammatical term for differences in who is or isn't included in a group pronoun), you should define the term in either a subtitle, i.e. “Chiaroscuro: A Study In Contrast,” or at the beginning of the summary.

As a courtesy to other writers, especially in small fandoms, you may want to check to make sure there's not already another fic with the same title in the same fandom, but this is not required. In large fandoms, there's no point in even trying. After all, there are only so many puns to be made about the full moon and only so many verses to Hallelujah.

It may be common practice on other platforms to include information such as fandom or ship in the title of a fic, but on Ao3 nothing that is specified by tags belongs in the title unless your title happens to be the same as a tag because, for instance, you've straightforwardly titled your character study of Dean Winchester “Dean Winchester Character Study” and also responsibly tagged it as such.

Summaries

Yes, you really do need to put something down for the summary. It might only need to be a single sentence, but give the readers something to go off of.

The summary is there to serve two purposes: one, to catch the interest of potential readers, give them a taste of what's inside, and make them want to know more; and two, to give you a space to provide information or make comments that don't really fit in the tags but that you want readers to see before they open the fic.

We've already talked some about that second function. When you put an explanation of the title or clarification about tags in the summary, that's the purpose it's serving. You can also put notes to “Heed the tags” or instruct readers that there are additional warnings in the author's note here in the summary, rather than doing so in the tags.

The first function, the actual summarizing, can be very hard for some of us. It's basically the movie trailer for your fic, butwhat are you even supposed to say?

There are two main strategies as to how to approach this: the blurb, and the excerpt. Blurbs are like the synopses you at least used to see on the backs of published books, or the “Storyline” section on an IMDb page. Writing one is a matter of telling your readers who does what, under what circumstances.

Depending on the fic, one sentence can capture the whole thing: “Sam and Alex have sex on a train.” “Tori tries to rob a bank.” “If anybody had mentioned Max's new house was haunted, Jamie wouldn't have agreed to help with the move.”

Sometimes a blurb can be a question! “What happens when you lock a nuclear engineer in a closet with a sewing kit, a tennis ball, and half a bottle of Sprite?”

Of course, plenty of blurbs are more than one sentence. Their length can vary pretty significantly depending on the type and length of fic you're working with and how much detail you're trying to convey, but it shouldn't get to be more than a few short paragraphs. You're not retelling the entire fic here.

An excerpt is a portion of the fic copied out to serve as the summary. This, too, can vary in length from a line or two to several paragraphs, but shouldn't get too long. It should not be an entire scene unless that scene happens to be uncommonly short. It's important to select a portion of the fic that both indicates the who, what, and under what circumstances of the fic and is representative of the overall tone. Excerpts that are nothing but dialogue with no indication of who's talking are almost never a good choice. Portions that are sexually explicit or extremely violent are never ever a good choice—if it deserves content warnings, it belongs inside the fic, not on the results page.

Counterintuitively, some of the best excerpts won't even look like an excerpt to the reader if they don't contain dialogue. They seem like particularly literary blurbs until the reader reaches that part in the fic and realizes they recognize a section of narration.

Some of us have very strong preferences as to whether we write blurbs or use excerpts for our summaries. Some readers have very strong preferences as to which they find useful. Ultimately, there's no accounting for taste, but there are things we can do to limit the frustration for readers who prefer summaries of the opposite kind than we prefer to write, without increasing our own frustration or work load very much. Part of that is understanding what readers dislike about each type so we know what to mitigate.

Blurbs can seem dry, academic, and overly simplified. They don't automatically give the reader a sense of your writing style the way an excerpt does. They can also seem redundant, like they're just rehashing information already given in the tags, so the reader feels like they're being denied any more information without opening the fic.

Excerpts can seem lazy, like you, the author, don't care enough to bother writing a blurb, or pushy like you're telling the reader “just read the fic; I'm not going to give you the information you need to decide if you want to read or not, I'm shoving it in front of you and you just have to read it.” That effect gets worse if your tags aren't very informative or clear about what the plot is, if the excerpt is obviously just the first few lines or paragraphs of the fic, if the except is particularly long, or, worst of all, if all three are true at once.

A lot of the potential problems with blurbs can be minimized by having fun writing them! Make it punchy, give it some character, treat it like part of the story, not just a book report. A fic for a serialized show or podcast, for instance, could have a blurb written in the style of the show's “previously on” or the podcast's intro. Make sure the blurb gives the reader something they can't just get from the tags—like the personality of your writing, important context or characterization, or a sense of the shape of the story—but don't try to skimp on the tags to do it!

Really, the only way to minimize the potential problems with excerpts is to be very mindful in selecting them. Make sure the portion you've chosen conveys the who, what, and under what circumstances and isn't too long. You know the story; what seems clear and obvious from the excerpt to you might not be apparent to someone who doesn't already know what happens, so you might need to ask a friend to double check you.

The absolute best way to provide a summary that works for everybody is to combine both methods. It really isn't that hard to stick a brief excerpt before your blurb, or tack a couple lines of blurb after your excerpt, but it can make a world of difference for how useful and inviting your summary is to a particular reader. The convention for summaries that use both is excerpt first, then blurb.

If you're struggling to figure out a summary, or have been in the habit of not providing one, try not to stress over it. Anything is better than nothing. As long as you've written something for a summary, you've given the reader a little more to help them make their decision. What really isn't helpful, though, is saying “I'm bad at summaries” in your summary. It's a lot like the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag in that it's unnecessarily self depreciating, frequently comes across as an excuse not to try, and sometimes really is just an excuse. Unlike the “I'm Bad At Tagging” tag, which has the tiny saving grace of warning readers you've probably missed something, saying you're bad at summaries has no utility at all, and may drive away a reader who thought your summary was quite good, but is uncomfortable with the negative attitude reflected by that statement. Summaries are hard. It's okay if you don't like your summary, but it's important for it to be there, and it's important to be kind to yourself about it. You're trying, that's what matters.

Author's Notes

Author's notes are the one place where we, the writers, directly address and initiate contact with our readers. We may also talk to them in the comments section, but that's different because they initiate that interaction while we reply, and comments are mostly one-on-one while in author's notes we're addressing everyone who ever reads our fic.

The very first note on a fic should contain any information, such as warnings or explanations, that a reader needs to see before they get to the body of the story, as well as anything like thanks to your beta, birthday wishes to a character, or general hellos and announcements you want readers to see before they get to the body of the story. On multi-chapter fics, notes at the beginning of chapters serve the same function for that chapter as the initial note on the fic does for the whole story, so you can do things like warn for Self-Harm on the two chapters out of thirty where it comes up, let everyone know your update schedule will be changing, or wish your readers a merry Christmas, if they celebrate it, on the chapter you posted on December 23rd but is set in mid-March.

Notes at the end of a fic or chapter are for things that don't need to be said or are not useful to a reader until after they've read the preceding content, such as translations for that handful of dialogue that's in Vulcan or Portuguese, or any parting greetings or announcements you want to give, like a thanks for reading or a reminder school is starting back so you won't be able to write as much. End notes are the best place to plug your social media to readers if you're inclined to do so, but remember that cannot include payment platforms like Patreon or Ko-fi.

As previously mentioned, warnings can go in end notes but that really should only be done when the warnings are particularly long, such that the length might cause a problem for readers who are already confident in their comfort level and would just want to scroll past the warning description. In that case, the additional warnings need to go in the note at the end of the first chapter, rather than at the end of the fic, if it's a multi-chapter fic; and you need to include an initial note telling readers that warnings/explanations of tags are at the bottom so they know to follow where the Archive tells them to see the end of the chapter/work for “more notes.”

When posting a new work, where the Preface section gives you the option to add notes “at the beginning” or “at the end” or both, if you check both boxes, it means notes at the beginning and end of the entire fic, not the beginning and end of the first chapter. For single-chapter fics this difference doesn't really matter, but for multi-chapter fics it matters a lot. In order to add notes to the beginning or end of the first chapter of a multi-chapter fic you have to first go through the entire process to post the new fic, then go in to Edit, Edit Chapter, and add the notes there.

Series and Chapters

Dealing with Series and Chapters is actually two different issues, but they're closely related and cause some of us mixups, especially when we're new to the site and its systems, so we're going to cover them together.

Series on Ao3 are for collecting up different stories that you've written that are associated with each other in some way. Chapters are for dividing up one story into parts, usually for pacing and to give yourself and your readers a chance to take breaks and breathe, rather than trying to get through the entire thing in a single marathon sitting (not that we won't still do that voluntarily, but it's nice to have rest points built in if we need them).

If your story would be one book if it was officially published, then it should be posted as a single fic—with multiple chapters if it's long or has more than one distinct part, like separate vignettes that all go together. If you later write a sequel to that fic, post it as a new fic and put them together in a series. It's exactly like chapters in a book and books in a series. Another way to think of this structure is like a TV show: different fics in the series are like different seasons of the show, with individual chapters being like episodes.

If you have several fics that all take place in the same AU but really aren't the same story those should go together as a series. If you wrote a story about a superhero team re-cast as school teachers, then wrote another story about different characters in the same school, that's this situation.

Series are also the best way to handle things like prompt games, bingos, or Kinktober, or collect up one shots and drabbles especially if your various fills, entries, and drabbles are for more than one fandom. If you put everything for a prompt game or bingo, or all your drabbles, together as one fic with a different chapter for each story, what ends up happening is that fic gets recognized by the Archive as a crossover when it isn't, so it gets excluded from the results pages for everyone who told the filters to Exclude Crossovers even though one of the stories you wrote is exactly what they're looking for; and that fic ends up with tons and tons of wildly varying and self-contradictory tags because it's actually carrying the tags for several entirely different, possibly unrelated stories, which also means it ends up getting excluded from results pages because, for instance, one out of your thirty-one Kinktober entries is about someone's NoTP.

Dividing these kinds of things up into multiple fic in a series makes it so much easier for readers to find what of your work they actually want to read.

If you've previously posted such things as a single fic, don't worry, it's a really common misunderstanding and there is absolutely nothing stopping you from reposting them separately. You may see traffic on them go up if you do!

Parting Thoughts

Metatext is ultimately all about communication, and in this context effective communication is a matter of responsibility and balance.

Ao3 is our archive. It's designed for us, the writers, to have the freedom to write and share whatever stories we want without having to worry that we'll wake up one day and find our writing has been deleted overnight without warning. That has happened too many times to so many in our community as other fanfic sites have died, been shut down, or caved to threats of legal action. Ao3 is dedicated to defending our legal right to create and share our stories. Part of the deal is that, in exchange for that freedom and protection, we take up the responsibility to communicate to readers what we're writing and who it's appropriate for.

We are each other's readers, and readers who don't write are still part of our community. We have a responsibility as members of this community to be respectful of others in our shared spaces. Ao3 is a shared space. The best way we have to show each other respect is to give one another the information needed to decide if a given fic is something we want to engage with or not, and then, in turn, to not engage with fic that isn't our cup of tea. As long as our fellow writer has been clear about what their fic is, they've done their part of the job. If we decided to look at the fic despite the information given and didn't like what we found, then that's on us.

Because metatext is how we put that vital information about our fics out in the community, it's important that our metatext is clear and easy to parse. The key to that is balance. Striking the balance between putting enough tags to give a complete picture and not putting too many tags that become an unreadable wall; the balance between the urge to be thorough and tag every character and the need to be restrained so those looking for fics actually about a certain character can find them; the balance between using established tags for clarity and ease and making up our own tags for specificity and fun.

Do your best, act in good faith, remember you're communicating with other people behind those usernames and kudos, and, most importantly, have fun with your writing!

#THE GUIDE #metatext #fandom meta #fandom etiquette #Eiiri made this

4K notes · View notes

shurisneakers · 3 years

Note

if you're taking ideas for harmless drabbles, i'd love to see one of bucky on one of those dates he mentioned and reader's shenanigans. if you aren't, feel free to ignore this!

a/n: are we really going to let a word limit define what a drabble is? is the vibe and spirit not enough? i say this bc this is 5.7k words long im so sorry. also hey thank you to everyone who piped in with their knowledge of violent geese and how apartment security works in new york!! also thanks to my bby @spiderrpcrker for reading this and telling me to publish this bc i wasnt going to fkjghfkj

warning: swearing, bad luck, dates, frustrated bucky, anxiety, mentions of gore but like only a sentence

here’s my ko-fi if you’d like to support my writing <333

Catch up with the rest of the series here: Harmless Masterlist

Bucky returns only two weeks later. His mission lasted longer than expected and all he wants is to lie down and sleep for forty eight hours straight.

“FRIDAY?” he mumbles, kicking off his shoes. His jacket had already been discarded by his bedroom door when he walked in.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes?”

“How are ya?” He doesn’t miss a beat in asking, even though he’s exhausted.

“As good as ever. Did you have a successful mission?”

“If by successful you mean one sprained limb instead of two, then yeah.” He wasn’t really cribbing. His ankle was already starting to heal anyway and it was worth the roundhouse kick to a Nazi's face. “Do I have anything scheduled for this weekend?”

“You have a meeting on your calendar scheduled for this Saturday.”

“Could you send a text to Y/N and ask if we can push it to the next day?” His muscles feel sore and God, he could definitely use a hot shower but all of that becomes secondary the minute he feels the sheets under him.

“Would you like me to reschedule the other one as well?”

“What’s that?” He opens one eye in confusion. “There’s another one?”

“It’s on Sunday. You’ve labelled it ‘date’.”

Ah, fuck.

“Would you like me to change it?” FRIDAY never sounds like she’s judging him, which is nice. It also reminds him about how she, as an AI, can’t judge him, which is a rude wake-up call to how he doesn’t have friends.

“No,” his voice is muffled against the pillow, “no, let it be. Where is it again?”

“You’ve only specified diner, Sergeant Barnes.”

Public space, daytime, plenty of escape routes. Good on his less delirious self for selecting a diner.

“Thanks, FRIDAY.” Now that he’s a little more relaxed, he can feel himself slip in and out of consciousness.

“One last thing," her automated voice commands his attention again. "Y/N replied. She says sure and to take care.”

“Yay.” Not even a second later he’s out like a light.

____

“Did you bring me any souvenirs?” Is the first thing he hears as he marches into your lair.

“What could I possibly get you?”

“A postcard, a t-shirt.” You don’t look up from your tinkering.

“Decapitated finger, used bullets,” he continues, “cement blocks.”

“Ew.” You snap the lid shut on the thing you’re working on, spinning around on your chair. "That's not nearly romantic enough."

“That’s all you’re going to get from a Russian underground bunker.” He does a mini jog up the stairs of the platform to where you are.

“Does the finger have a ring at lea- oh hello?” You raise an eyebrow at the sight of him. “You look different.”

He peers down. The outfit was still all black. As always.

“Not your clothes, dummy,” you interrupt, making him look back at you. “Your face. What’d you do?”

He unconsciously raises a hand to his cheek.

“Did you wash your face? Is that it?” you squint at him. “Has it been a few months since the last time?”

“Wow, you’re so funny,” he drawls sarcastically. “Top tier comedian right there.”

“No wait, it’s the beard.” You snap your fingers in realisation, completely ignoring his comment. “You trimmed it.”

“So what if I did?” He leans on your table.

“You going somewhere?” you ask, elastic snapping against your hands as you remove your gloves.

“It’s none of your busi-”

“Hold on a second.” A sly smile begins to make its way onto your face. “Are you going on a date, Bucky Barnes?”

His comeback dies down in his throat. That didn’t take you very long for you to figure out.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” You look smug, to say the least.

“Shut up.” A ray of light glistening distracts him. He traces it to the thing you were working on earlier.

“Where are you guys going?” You cross your arm across your chest, a small smirk on your face.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” It’s a silver box, engraved intricately with swirls that, when he observes carefully, looks like a skull. Wow, terrifying.

“I’m literally asking you.”

“What are those?” He shifts the conversation towards a more productive angle instead.

“Evil in a box and some other stuff.” You shrug offhandedly. “Is it a lunch date or just coffee?”

“Like Pandora’s Box?”

“A discount version, sure,” you confirmed impatiently. “Stop changing the topic, listen to me.”

He tilts his head, waiting for you to continue.

“Do you need a chaperone?” The sincerity in your voice for such a bullshit question has him scoffing.

“Good God- no, I do not need a chaperone. I’m 106 years old, I can go out unsupervised.” He reaches over and plucks the box off your table.

“Sir, you’re a geriatric."

“What are those?” He points to a few ray odd ray guns.

“Minor stuff you don’t have to worry about right now.”

He shakes the box in his hand. “What’s gonna happen if I open this?”

“Very bad things,” you whispered ominously before your volume returns to normal. “How’d you meet this person? Online?”

“She’s Natasha’s friend.” He turns the box over, seeing a small latch at the side. “What bad things?”

“Bad luck and misery. Don’t play with it, it’s dangerous.” You pull the box away from him. “Aw, is it a blind date?”

“Why do you care so much?” he shoots back, tugging the box back towards him.

“Just lookin’ out for you, Bucko,” you huff, adjusting your grip on your device. “Need to keep my favourite senior citizen safe.”

“I have a vibranium arm.” Whose force he could use to grab the box once and for all, but wasn’t. “I think I’ll be fine.”

“What if she has one too, huh? Then what?”

“She doesn’t.” As far as he knows, he’s the only one alive with a metal appendage made out of the strongest metal in the world. That could very well change by tomorrow but he's keeping the title for now.

“But what if she does? I swear to- stop trying to take the box!” You pull a little more forcefully, but he doesn’t relent.

“I want this to get over before this evening.”

“What time’s your date?”

“Why do you care?” He’s sure anyone who saw the dumb tug-of-war you both were playing would just automatically assume he was an absolute manchild, not an Avenger.

“Because.” You don’t explain further. “Tell me what time your date is, you weirdo.”

“Five o’clock, now let go.”

“Fine,” you say, suddenly loosening your grip. Clearly, it doesn't make much of a difference since he isn't struggling to keep his balance from the sudden loss of force.

“Fine.” He clears his throat, straightening up.

You don’t say anything. He doesn’t either.

A putrid smell creeps into his nose, one all too similar to spoiled milk and decaying seaweed. He has to physically stop himself from gagging.

“Have a good day.” You smile and lean far back. Too far. It looks like you're almost going to fall out of the chair.

Through the tears that are threatening to line his eyelids, he looks down at the box whose latch you somehow managed to lift, leaving the box open.

“What the fuck is this?” He coughs, swatting at the air in front of him to clear it.

“I told you; bad luck in a box.”

“You can’t scientifically create bad luck, that’s bullshit.” He tosses the box back onto your table. You watch it slide past you, not making any effort to stop it. “What is it really?”

“I’m not lying.” You pull open a drawer, brandishing a small table fan that you set down beside you. “If you open it, you’re going to have terrible luck for the day.”

He glowers at you when you turn the fan on, forcing the fumes back towards him.

“Besides, that’s all I was doing today.” You kick your feet up. “So you can leave now.”

He doesn’t care if you’re lying about not having anything else to do today. You could burn down the world if you wanted to but he needs to take a stupid shower. Again.

“You’re the fuckin’ worst.” He tries airing out his shirt, hoping that the smell would dissipate as soon as possible.

“Have fun on your date, sarge!” you encourage him as he stalks out of the lair. “Remember to wrap it befo-”

He turns it into a sprint before you can finish.

____

Six hours later and he’s absolutely convinced he fucked up.

He isn’t used to having his weekends free.

He realises that this is the first time in months that he’s actually stepped out of the Tower for something that wasn’t directly mission-related. He should probably get some air. Touch some grass. See the sun.

His shirt thankfully manages to rid itself of the odour from the dumb box so he didn’t have to go take a shower. With nothing much planned and a few hours to spare, he heads to the coffee shop instead.

It’s a small place, bustling and alive with a crowd of people. They have a little bookshelf that usually is full of books donated by patrons, free for anyone to read.

The barista smiles at him. The coffee costs more than his high school education. He awkwardly smiles back.

He’s not a regular, but they’ve seen him enough times to know that he usually asks for black coffee in a to-go cup, later adding a sugar or two according to his own taste. They're nice to him, occasionally throwing in a cookie or something on the house. He can't tell if it's because of the Avenger status or the sizeable tip he leaves.

He picks up a random book from the shelf, fully intending not to read it but to just sit there and think. The book acted as a shield for his resting bitch face, resting murder face and his resting rage face. More often than not, a good combination of the three.

He sets the coffee down at the corner table he manages to nab in a quick second, along with the two sachets of sugar.

“Is this seat taken?” Someone asks from beside him. He earnestly shakes his head in a ‘no’, gesturing for them to take it.

They give him a quick thanks and drag the chair away from his table.

He does a quick overlook of the book he picked up.

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot.

Well, now he’s too anxious to put it back. YA fiction it is.

He reaches for the sugar while glossing over the summary. He reaches a little further when it doesn’t come to his hand immediately, blindly running his fingers across the table.

Bucky peeks over the book, eyebrows knitting together when he notices that they’re missing.

He was sure he picked it up.

He looks underneath the table. It wasn’t there, neither under his seat. Strange, but okay. He picks up the book and the cup, walking back to the station to grab two sugars.

This time he makes sure to tuck it into his pocket, double-checking before going back to his table.

Which was now occupied. He wanted to groan.

His mind automatically reverts back to the box from that morning.

“Come on,” he scoffs quietly to himself. It was a coincidence. “Get yourself together.”

“A seat at the counter just cleared up,” the barista from earlier offers when she sees him standing in the middle of the store.

See? Good luck.

He shoots her a grateful look, venturing over to the barstool to take his place. It’s not the most comfortable, but then again, he wasn’t planning to stay there for very long.

He empties the sugar into the coffee, stirring slowly before opening a random page in the book.

He takes a long sip, ignoring how hot the drink was.

He chokes immediately. Because either he was losing his mind or his order had somehow got switched from ‘no sugar’ to ‘diabetes in a cup’.

He takes another small sip and his face immediately twists in disgust. Definitely too sweet. The sweetener he added only made it worse.

He catches the eye of the barista. She looks on in concern.

“Is everything okay?”

Fuck.

He’s not one to make a scene. He just wants to live as imperceptibly as he could.

“Yep.” The sweetness sticks to the back of his throat. “All good.”

He just closes his eyes and downs the rest of it without thinking twice, trying to hide the grimace in his face. He gives her a weak thumbs up. She doesn't look convinced.

He leaves the shop soon after, hands shoved in his pocket. Maybe he could go sit by the lake at Central Park, watch the clouds. It reminded Bucky of the lake in front of his hut in Wakanda and the hours he'd sit in front of it, feet dipped into the water as his goats fed. He misses it.

He makes a sharp turn at a corner, still thinking about his options when his ankle abruptly twists under him.

He stumbles rather ungracefully, almost hitting the ground, but manages to save himself through the newly built up immunity he has towards falling thanks to all his encounters with you.

His gaze lands on his hardcore combat boots. Their laces had come undone.

Now he just knew that was horseshit. He always double knots them; they had never loosened in the past before.

The box.

He shoves the thought out of his head, crouching down to tie them again. He tugs on them to make sure they’re secure before standing up again.

Central Park is a few blocks away but he’s glad he didn’t bring his bike. The weather was rather nice and the wind in his hair felt good.

He wanders around the park for a while, looking for the lake. He pauses at a board with a map of the park on it, assessing how far it was.

Once he's ascertained which path to go towards, he turns on his heel to go.

He fucking trips again.

“Are you serious?” he says furiously under his breath. “Cut it out.”

He’s half-convinced that he should tie it around his ankle like a sexy lace-up set of heels. He ties a triple knot this time, glares at it until he’s sure it’s fine and checks to see if anyone saw him humiliate himself.

Only a person on a nearby bench who looked like they were passed out drunk, given that their hoodie and sunglasses clad self was slumped over.

No witnesses. No 'You won't BELIEVE what the Winter Soldier did! Critics say it's his biggest blunder yet!' articles the next day on social media.

He manages to make it to the lake in one piece and no more falls, partly because he keeps his eyes fixed on his shoes to ensure no fuckery occurs.

There are a few people rowing and plenty of others lining the bank at scattered locations. There’s a mom and her kid at the place he ends up. She sends him a small smile in greeting and he returns the favour.

There’s a secluded bench that he takes a place on, letting out a small sigh. If he ignores the traffic and the skateboarders and the people in general, it’s actually kind of peaceful.

There are geese and their little goslings swimming around the water close to the shore. Maybe he should have brought some birdseed. Or kale.

The kid beside him is busy fashioning something out of leaves, only occasionally erupting into giggles when it doesn't pan out. His mom watches him fondly, pointing at twigs he could use. Everything seems kind of picture-perfect and his body automatically relaxes, easing further into the seat and closing his eyes for a second.

Until there's a large splash and loud distressed honking. He whips his head around to find the same kid staring straight ahead at the goose with a wide grin. His mother curses quietly, picking herself up off the ground and grabbing his hand, half chastising him for throwing something at an animal and half urging him to walk faster.

The goose turns to Bucky. With no one else to blame for the sudden attack, it logically launches itself at him. His smile drops.

He gets up in a rush. The dumb bird nearly comes for his head, but he deflects with his metal arm.

“I didn’t even do anything.” He swats at it swiftly, trying not to cause any real damage. The goose, understandably, does not speak English.

He flinches when one of them bites at his knee. He can punt it to the sun but he doesn’t want to.

“Stop that.” He sticks his hand out to shove the stupid thing away, retreating back to the road. “Jesus, why are you so aggressive?”

Among the barrage of feathers showering on him, he prays his damn shoelace doesn’t unravel as he shields his head with one arm, the other fending himself while he moves hurriedly away.

The goose honks angrily at him. He scowls at it, not exactly pleased with the reminder that these fucking overgrown ducks were constantly bloodthirsty.

It doesn’t leave him alone till he’s significantly away from where he was sitting. He wants to call it profanity but that’d probably piss it off more.

The box and its effects were definitely starting to feel real.

Fuck it, no more day out for him. The best plan he can think of is to just go to the diner he’s supposed to meet his date at.

The waiter greets him with a courteous nod, which Bucky can only imagine was the best he could muster when a dishevelled 200-pound man walks in covered in goose feathers and irritation.

He won't admit that he’s too scared to eat lunch at this point because he can’t rule out food poisoning. He spends the next two hours on his phone playing Fruit Ninja and plucking feathers that accented his all-black outfit.

Several glasses of water later and a second before he’s about to beat his high score, someone taps on his shoulder, breaking him out of his concentration.

Motherfu-

He clenches his eye shut, inhaling deeply before turning around.

“James?”

“Hey, yeah, that’s me.” Bucky almost falls over the table with how fast he stands up, clearly underestimating his size. “Leah?”

“Hi.” She smiles and he finds himself smiling nervously along with her.

“Hi.” He steps out to pull out her chair for her and she laughs. "Nice to meet you."

“How long have you been waiting here?” she asks while setting down her bag.

“Around ten minutes.” He clears his throat to hopefully hide the fact that he was lying through his teeth.

“Just give me a second, I need to tell my friend I reached,” Leah pulls out her phone and he nods.

“Another glass of water for you?” The waiter seems less enthusiastic about Bucky’s 8th refill.

“Yes,” he answers, hoping he doesn’t call him out on it, “please.”

“You must be really dehydrated."

Bucky turns to look at him slowly. “I like the taste.”

He can’t really blame the guy. Bucky’s been there for hours without ordering anything solid, just leaching off their free water and complimentary bread basket.

“So, James.” She tosses her phone back into her bag, leaning forward on her palms easily. “Tell me about yourself.”

He had rehearsed this a million times. He could do this.

“I, uh,-”

“Menu?” Okay, so someone clearly had a vendetta against him.

“Thank you.” She takes it with a smile.

His morning debacle with the coffee flashes through his mind. Suddenly the idea of a diner didn’t seem so smart.

However, she’s already placed her order and George is standing beside him expectantly, daring him to ask for another glass of water, so he places his usual order and hopes that your stupid bad luck thing wore off.

He quickly learns that his date is laid back, and it isn’t hard to fall into a rhythm with her even though she’s the one asking most of the questions.

“How’d you meet Nat?” Is his attempt at one.

“She used to come in for lunch every week at the place I work.” Leah leans back in her chair. “She can really handle her alcohol.”

He’d be worried about Nat day drinking if he didn’t know about her complete inability to get drunk. She might as well have been downing glasses of lemonade.

“Yeah, she’s-” Intimidating, scary, cool “-really something.”

“She mentioned that you like movies.” He definitely spends a lot of time watching them. “You got any recommendations?”

It’s easier to figure out how different things are or how much he missed out over the years through them. He’s glad he sat out the early 2000s, judging by their fashion sense and hairstyles.

He's watched several movies over the past few months, a few of them critically acclaimed and others who were just there for the cult following.

But now everything goes blank and the only thing that he can remember are the biopics made about Steve that were somehow hilarious for gifting him the mental image of Freddie Prinze Jr. dressed in the stars and stripes, and highly distressing for the number of historical inaccuracies. Contrary to popular belief, Stevie did not, in fact, consider running for president after he took up the shield, nor did he start his own bar chain.

He can’t name Oh Captain, My Captain starring Channing Tatum as his favourite movie on his first date and hope to make a good first impression.

“Despicable Me was kinda fun.” He wants to kill himself. “I mean, it’s the last one I saw.”

Her face twists in mild disgust, but he can tell it isn't ill-intentioned. “It's a good movie, but God, that just gave me some intense flashbacks to my aunt’s Facebook page. Don’t think I can look at a minion ever again.”

He sniggers with her. He doesn’t know what the context is.

He’s a little awkward, and he can definitely tell he isn’t the most open book but she laughs at some of his attempts at jokes. There’s a distinct discomfort he has lingering at the back of his mind prodding at him, telling him over and over again that he isn’t ready for something like this. A warning bell, asking him to leave as soon as possible because he was in a dangerous situation.

He remembers what his therapist told him about breathing and remembering that the resources he had available were greater than his anxiety and he tries to get out of his head. It takes a few minutes of acting like he's fine but he manages to do it.

Other than the one time he scalds his tongue on the coffee but played it off with a pained smile, shoving down thoughts of your stupid invention, things actually went okay.

It was nice, even though they decided by the end that it was better if they both gelled together better as friends. It lifts the strange fear he feels and he can hear Dr. Mendoza say she's proud of him for taking this step before spending three hours psychoanalysing why they decided to stay platonic.

Bucky promises to visit her sushi shop with Nat soon and she says a bottle of sake awaits him for a drinking game. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that Nat and he share the same tolerance for alcohol.

He makes sure to leave George a tip. A big one. It’s the first time he sees the guy smile the entire evening.

He’s waving goodbye to Leah outside and he thinks that maybe it was a good end to the day and that things actually turned out fine.

Until he turns around to leave, only to have someone walk straight into him with an iced tea.

The cold comes as a bit of a shock, making him jump slightly. He stares at his shirt, using his fingertips to pull it away from his body.

The person melts into a series of apologies immediately, offering to dry clean his shirt but Bucky just forces a shake of his head and says it’s okay even though he can feel the sugar making the shirt stick to his chest. Goose feathers and iced tea. Was there anything else that would like to attach itself to him?

His fists clench and his teeth grit and he has to physically control himself from sprinting to your lair because God knows what else is in store for him and he didn't want to add in any way.

The door to the lair is locked. Fuckin’ brilliant.

When no one answers after minutes worth of waiting, he fishes for his phone and realises that maybe two hours of Fruit Ninja was not the best idea, especially on a phone known for having shitty battery life.

There’s roughly 2 percent left. By the time he opens his app to give you a call, his phone screen goes black.

He groans. He’s desperate at this point and under any other normal circumstances, he would have never, ever considered doing this.

But ten minutes later he’s outside your apartment building. You’re aware that he has your address; no doubt that it was in the SHIELD file he had gotten, and he knows that you know but it was still weird.

The buzzer has your last name listed next to it. He’s sure that he’ll break it if he keeps pressing it at this rate but he really needs you to let him in.

“Who the fu-” your voice comes through the intercom.

“I’m sorry for showing up like this, my phone died and I couldn’t reach you,” He breathes out as soon as he hears you. “But I need you to fix this.”

When he doesn’t hear a reply, he wonders if the thing actually worked. He’s about to start pressing it again-

“Bucky?” You sound a little surprised to hear him. “You’re at my house. Why are you at my house?”

“I need you to fix whatever this is.”

“What are you- fine, I’m buzzing you in,” your voice, initially confused soon trails off into something more dismissive.

There’s a soft click from the door, allowing him to push it open. The elevator is already on the same floor as him so he just uses that.

The elevator goes up a floor or two. His feet tap restlessly against the carpeted floor.

The lights turn off and everything comes to a standstill. His foot stops tapping.

He should have known. He should have fucking known.

Thirty seconds pass. He’s still in pitch darkness with the elevator showing no signs of moving.

In fact, he’s resigned to his fate. He sits down on the ground, only one step away from completely laying down and hoping someone finds his body here someday.

It’s six minutes of plain silence. He might as well get comfortable if he’s going to get stuck here for the rest of his life. Did he change his will? Does he even have a will?

There’s finally a whir. He thinks that maybe he’s going to plummet to his doom as the perfect end to this day, but then the light switches on and it starts moving upward.

It stops at the floor with a ding. He doesn’t get off the ground, only eyes the door wearily. With his luck, it wouldn’t open.

But it does and within a second he’s on his feet, scrambling to get out before it changes its mind.

He remembers your door number, basically charging down the hall to get to it.

The door is white and the paint is starting to chip off it. The handle itself is dented in a few places and he wonders if it was your fault or someone else's.

His knocks are rapid, agitated even. He doesn’t stop until he hears your loud shouts telling him to cut it out.

“What the hell were you doing, trying to break down my door?” It swings open, revealing you in your pajamas. “Haven’t you done that already? And where were you, I’ve been waiting for like, ten minutes.”

He honestly feels bad for showing up uninvited and highly flustered. He can’t imagine it’s a pretty sight either. "This bad luck shit- fix it. My whole day’s been fucked up.”

“What are you-” Your eyebrows knit together in confusion, taking in his appearance.

It takes you a second to realise what he’s talking about but when you do, your face settles.

“How was your date?” You lean against the door frame, arms crossed over your chest.

“Really,” He glowered at you, “that’s what you care about?”

“Yes.” You nod. “Did you have fun?”

He hesitates. “I guess?”

“Was she nice?”

“Yeah.” Where was this going.

“Good, I’m happy for you.” The smile on your face is genuine. “Look at you go, Casanova.”

“We agreed to be just friends, but that’s not the point here. Y/N,” he whines. “I have a mission next week, I can’t afford to fuck up. My whole day was off and I don’t want it to carry over.”

“Your whole day?” you questioned, standing up instead of leaning against the wall. “Buck-”

“Just fix it.”

“Okay.” You lift your hand up, extending it towards his face.

He waits for you to do something.

You flick him on the forehead.

“There,” you declare, going back to your previous position. “you’re cured.”

What.

He says exactly what he’s thinking.

You laugh. “Dude. I was fucking with you.”

Huh?

“Well, actually maybe just like, three things and then I got bored.”

He’s confused.

“You know,” you begin when he doesn’t reply, “taking the sugar packets, switching your coffee order when you were looking under the table, took your place when you left, the shoelaces.”

“The shoelaces?”

“Yeah.” You nod. “That’s the other ray gun you saw this morning. Unties your shoelaces. I stopped after that because I thought you figured it out.”

His face scrunches in puzzlement.

“I mean, you looked right at me and told me to cut it out.”

He racks his brain about what you could possibly be talking about before it hits him. The hungover person on the goddamn bench in the park.

“You were the one in the hoodie and sunglasses.”

“I just followed the Avengers’ code of disguise.” You shrug. “Turns out it kinda works. Also teleportation. So helpful.”

He forgot about the teleportation. That's why you could do all of it so fast without him noticing you were even there.

“What about the fucking geese?”

You pause for a second. “The geese?”

“And the elevator.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” The confusion on your face is apparent. “What geese and elevator? I have no idea what you’re saying right now.”

“Everything’s been a mess today,” he grumbles. “I don’t know what’s real or not.”

“I swear I had nothing to do with it other than what I mentioned.” There’s indignation on your features that quickly gives way to delight. “Holy shit, did I just accidentally invent portable bad luck?”

“Okay-” his palm finds its way to his forehead in exasperation, “-then what the hell was the smell?”

“What smell- oh, the one from the box?”

He nods briskly.

“Secretions Magnifique.” You snorted. “It’s a perfume. The worst rated one I could find.”

“Perfume?”

“With notes of milk, seaweed and sandalwood.”

“It wasn’t an inator?”

“No, it wasn- did you get vibe checked by a goose at the park?” You stifle a laugh when you notice a stray feather on his thigh.

“What does that even mean?” he asks in despair.

“I can see why it attacked you. You got bad juju.” You raise an eyebrow. “Maybe if you stop staring so much-”

“So I just have shit luck.” Is that a fucking relief or even worse?

“Well,” you begin but decide not to continue.

Even with all the irritability masking it, you could see that he genuinely was just not having a good time.

“Wait here a second.”

You leave him at the door. He shifts his balance and sighs, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He still had to walk back to the Tower. Maybe he could grab a slice of pizza along the way since he skipped lunch.

“Okay, here.” You return with a large glass of water. He only looks at it. “It’s just water, I promise. You look like you ran a marathon."

He takes it from you sceptically, pushing away the urge to sniff at it. It’s gone within a few gulps.

You wait until he’s finished to point at his arm. He draws his eyebrows together, but you only curl your index finger and beckon for him to give you his hand.

He reluctantly extends it towards you.

“Don’t laugh,” you warn him, taking his metal arm. “This usually helps me.”

You tie a small bracelet around his wrist. It has a few beads, which he realises represent the colours of the solar system.

“Keep that for good luck.” You pat it gently after securing it. “I think you just had a bad day; those don’t last very long. Do you want to charge your phone before you leave?”

“Uh-” The bracelet’s pretty, the colours shine against the dark vibranium. “-no, I’m good. I’ll just leave.”

“Okay. Anything else I can help you with or will you be fine?”

He narrows his eyes. “You’re being suspiciously nice.”

“I’m not evil all the time.” You huff. “My hours are in the morning.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he says again. “I’m gonna go then.”

“See you next week.” You give him a little wave. “I’d say break a leg on your mission but knowing your situation...”

He scoffs. “Thanks.”

You make a move to close the door when starts walking down the hallway towards the exit.

He adjusts the beads slightly so he can see them better. The Earth one has glitter in it. He thinks it’s cute.

“Bucky.”

He turns around.

There’s a hint of a smile on your face.

“Take the stairs.”

He doesn’t have to be told twice.

Next part

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #mcu fic #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bucky fluff #bucky barnes fluff #bucky angst #bucky barnes angst #harmless fic #winter soldier x reader #Winter Soldier #bucky barnes #bucky

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sukiglycerin · 3 years

Text

the scrapbook documenting denki kaminari and his experiences with love, subtlety, and volumes of manga || denki kaminari.

* pairing: denki kaminari x oblivious!reader (gender neutral!)

* genre: fluff, normal conflict(??) but not much, uni!au, friends to lovers, mutual pining, idiots to lovers

* words: 4.5k

* warnings: brief scenario of intoxication, mentions of maidgirls (one of them has a gun because mey-rin from kuroshitsuji), reader has past bad experiences with relationships, bakusquad is supportive af, reader is oblivious (duh), i love sero, side kiribaku

* original request: Can you do a fluff Denki crushing on the reader but the reader is really oblivious to him just badly flirting and bakusquad gets annoyed and helps them get together 😳

* a/n: this turned out much longer than expected, but i’m satisfied with the turn-out! i call this a “scrapbook” because it’s like a collection of short moments. i’m experimenting with this writing style, so i hope you enjoy it! i started writing reader by basing them off of this one pretty girl i know (and very much like), but then reader started morphing into me projecting myself and oh boy. yeah. fun fact: i actually own the kuroshitsuji manga volume with the maidgirl on the cover (volume 22).

“please don’t like me,” is the first thing you say to denki kaminari. you don’t know who he is, though, when you say these words. all you know is that he’s presumably a college student like you and that he’s quite extroverted. behind him stand three of his friends giggling to themselves. it’s apparent they’re playing a practical joke.

the first thing the blond boy said to you was, “hey, you’re cute, i like you.” that was thirty seconds ago, after you’d put your manga down when you noticed his friends pushing him towards you.

he cracks a grin upon your response. “alright.” he puts his hands up in mock surrender. “the point still stands - you’re cute.” his eyes fall to the manga you set down. “hey- is that detective conan?”

it’s an old, worn copy of detective conan’s first volume.

“oh, yeah,” you reply.

“can i see it?” he asks. you nod.

he picks up the book, surprisingly gentle with its fading corners and creased spine.

"i used to read the series all the time," he says quietly, reliving a memory in his eyes. "i always tried to solve the crime before conan."

you're not sure what to answer, but he introduces himself before you can.

"i'm kaminari, by the way." he slips a piece of paper in your manga, setting the book down on your table. "text me."

“please don’t fall in love with me,” is the first thing you whisper to denki kaminari, hushed under the sheets in mina’s room. you're surprised he can hear you over the quiet murmurings of a ghibli movie playing on the tv; you're surprised he's awake.

“okay,” and it’s the first promise he’s ever broken, voice all low and hoarse from the after-effects of prolonged silence.

(maybe he should've feigned sleep, he later thinks, as his heart stupidly falls and crashes clumsily into love. maybe he shouldn't have said anything at all.)

he turns onto his back, staring at the ceiling. it's dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars mina and sero had impulsively hung up one friday evening instead of studying. there's a couple moons, too, which bakugou had frowned upon, stating, "where are we, jupiter? there's only one moon orbiting earth." kirishima laughed.

from the sound of shuffling sheets and a quick glance next to him, denki can tell you're now laying on your back, too. he almost makes a comment about you copying him. he stares at the faux stars overhead, not tired enough to close his eyes and allow sleep it's victory for the night. there's not much to do while awake at the moment other than strain his ear to decipher to the tv's audio. his throat feels dry, but he's not motivated enough to sit up to grab a water bottle. anyway, he supposes you and he are staring at the same sky, in a cheesy way. he remembers reading something like that in a book.

he kills the time and his aching mind by finding stupid constellations in the stick-on stars. there's a slightly distorted dipper of some sort, and a heart. there's a lot of squares. there's a shape he passes off as orion, but he knows anyone a tad more into astronomy than him would gasp at the abstract shape and completely dismiss its resemblance to orion.

eventually, your breathing slows to a rhythmic pace beside him. the logical part of his mind tells him to sleep now that you, too, are sleeping. he doesn't know why he waited for you to be asleep first. one pentagon constellation later, kaminari allows sleep's gaze to wash over and envelope him. the ghibli movie is still playing.

it seems that his friends have beat him, somehow, to the conclusion that denki kaminari has a bit of a crush on you. it's childish, really. he shouldn't like you, recalling your first words to him. they struck you apart from other people he'd met. back then, though, he never seriously thought about you like that. sure, you were conventionally attractive (enough for him to approach you to give you his number), but it was all in good fun. that's what you were, too, for the longest time: good fun and a friend.

until one day, glances lingered for too long while you weren't looking. one day, kaminari's jokes became more and more aimed for you, to hear your laughter in his ears. one day, kaminari realizes he has your usual coffee and bubble tea order memorized, when he can barely remember his own.

he pretends all of it is completely normal, but mina assures him differently. as does bakugou, which is strange, because he's usually not wrapped up in other people's affairs (when voicing this to the blond, he responded, "it's hard not to notice because you're too damn obvious"). it's kind of hard to ignore when bakugou calls it obvious (he's literally had kirishima pining over him since day one with no notice).

kaminari really does try to ignore the bubbling feeling rising at the bottom of his heart. he really does, but you keep on shaking and shaking his poor heart until it's all fizzy like a bottle of soda. he's weak, okay? one day, he’ll explode.

his friends are all urging him to confess to you already, but he cannot work up the nerve to do so. instead, kaminari drops you obvious hints that he likes you. he doesn't know whether you're completely oblivious to them or if you're deliberately ignoring them.

he's been so painfully obvious, he swears.

he's practically able to write a list of hints he's dropped. he's fairly confident he could publish it as an advice book with the title "how to tell your crush you like them without saying 'i like you.'" by this point, he's the king of obvious subtlety.

the list would go something like this, in no particular order:

pick-up lines

"did it hurt, when you fell-" you were silent, "-from the vending machine? because you're a snack."

silence. absolute radio silence. he was extremely tempted to run away from the sheer awkwardness between the two of you. as he turned to leave and freak out in private, he heard you mumble a belated "thanks," which made everything worth it.

he still left to freak out, though (and plan his next pick-up line to tell you).

manga references

"hey, y/n," kaminari had said one day, after a particular burst of confidence. you hadn't looked up from your book.

"if i were shinichi from detective conan, you'd be ran," he'd said, referencing the main love interests from the manga. "or maybe vice versa. you are the smart one in this relationship..."

you didn't bat an eye. "they never get together, though? shinichi and ran."

"they- they don't?!" he'd sputtered indignantly. he definitely needed to read up his detective conan lore. "but they both like each other?"

"true," you'd replied in typical you fashion, neither letting on whether you did like him or not. well, hey, kaminari had thought. you didn't deny it. progress.

hand size comparison (which was, in reality, just an excuse to kind of hold your hand)

kaminari had smoothly been planning this for weeks (which, according to sero, was a little sad). he'd bring up the topic of hands one day in your daily conversations, then nonchalantly slip a "oh, y/n, let's do a hand size comparison!" he high-fived himself mentally upon the formulation of this genius plan - you'd definitely fall for him (or at least, realize his feelings for you - this state of teetering between do they like me or do they not like me frustrated him for months on end). the perfect opportunity presented itself one day as the two of you lounged in mina’s room (which, at this point, had become you and your friends’ hangout spot) studying.

“wow, you type fast,” kaminari remarked as he pretended to innocently look up from the “work” (changing his laptop wallpaper for the tenth time that day) he was doing. you were focused on your work, sitting on mina’s bed with your laptop propped up by a pillow on your lap. you’d barely registered his words, judging by the way your eyebrows scrunched and how you looked up at him after a slow beat.

“oh, uh, thanks,” you replied. “i’m just copying some text down. i don’t usually type this fas…” you trailed off, eyes widening as you watched kaminari scooching next to you on the bed. he put his hand next to yours, whose fingers still ghosted the keys of your keyboard.

“look,” he said softly, bringing your hands up to eye level. “hand size comparison.” it was breathed out belatedly, but your crystalline eyes didn’t leave his. he started to curve his fingers in between yours, holding your hand so tenderly. he really, really didn’t want to let go. “we fit.” it was a whisper he wasn’t sure you could hear - did he want you to hear it? “like… a puzzle,” he added awkwardly.

you nodded, dazed, slowly bending your fingers over his. he rocked your clasped hands side to side, a fond feeling creeping through his limbs. it was warm and tingly - and maybe it was contagious. could you feel it too, buzzing past his fingertips to you?

precisely three minutes passed before kaminari’s arm started to ache. he didn’t catch your disappointed expression when he let go of your hand, but he did catch the smile that emerged when he held your hand as the sides of your fingers nudged the bed. you didn’t get much work done after that, sitting in silence with him.

brushing your hand in a popcorn bucket

movie nights on fridays were commonplace at mina’s. the plan, this time, was created by kirishima, who said that it was manly with just the right amount of romantic. kaminari hoped so. the movie settled on was some romance flick, as decided by mina, kirishima, and sero’s pleading with a very begrudging bakugou.

he can’t remember much of the movie. what he can remember, however, is the very close presence of you next to him as the two of you shared a popcorn bucket (courtesy of sero’s very romantic ideas). your hands brushed a (purposeful, on kaminari’s end) dozen times throughout the film. the last couple were accidents. on the first time, though, kaminari watched with satisfaction from his peripheral view as you looked from him to the popcorn that obscured the place where your hands made contact. he was very satisfied by the time the movie ended.

truth or drink (which just ended up with you and he both getting very, very drunk)

you didn’t particularly enjoy the taste of sake, but that night was an exception. according to your drunken explanation, you had a very rough day. your exam, first and foremost, did not go particularly well (“who cares about freud!?” you blurted. “i dooooon’t!”). kaminari didn’t have the heart to ask who this freud was. then, one of your close friends confessed to you (which almost made kaminari’s heart stop, when you first recounted it to him), and you had to turn them down. you adamantly refused any sort of relationship, you told kaminari. (“nuh uh,” you shook your head. “they’re not good.”) it was surprising to him that you opened up that night. your first couple drinks left you quieter than usual - which was scary, because kaminari was practically having a conversation with himself then. a couple more drinks loosened your tongue, though.

“there’s someone i like.” you jabbed a finger at him. “but i’m not supposed to saaaay… and it’s scaaary,” you slurred.

“ohh?” kaminari asked, more focused on the burn in the back of his throat. “whooo is it?”

you looked at your arm outstretched to him, and the pieces fell into place slower than they should’ve. he first looked around, just in case he was covering the person you were really pointing to (of course, you and him were the only ones there).

“this guy?" he asked, flabbergasted and pointing to himself. "him?!"

you nodded solemnly. "but i don't like dating," you said stubbornly. "love is dead!" you announced, flopping on the carpet.

kaminari watched the heaving of your breaths as you lay on the ground, and strained his ears to hear your soft, soberish murmuring.

"i really like you, denki kaminari."

a dopish grin formed itself on his face. "i really like you too, y/n."

kaminari then promptly blacked out, but not before hearing you running to the bathroom to throw up.

as of now, he can’t recall anything he or you said that night. on the contrary, he can vividly remember the ringing in his head and the sickly feeling that overtook him the next morning.

"you two are so frustrating!" mina declares over her sweetened iced tea. she points at kaminari, then to you standing with sero in the distance. you’re animatedly talking about some painting (“it’s renoir!” you mooned when you first saw it) while he and the rest of the group sit on a nearby bench.

kaminari puts his hands up. “don’t look at me - i tried my best!”

“yeah, sure,” mina dismisses. “and i’m the queen of england.”

“i mean, they already told me not to like them!” kaminari counters. “what am i supposed to do about that?”

“shoot your shot!” mina urges. “c’mon, what’s the worst that could happen? …wait, don’t answer that.”

“yeah, kaminari, bro,” kirishima puts his elbow on kaminari’s shoulder. “flirt a little bit more.”

“that’s all you two seem to do,” bakugou grumbles from the other side of kirishima.

“you just need a little push,” mina says. kaminari isn’t sure he likes mina’s definition of push.

“i think i’m g-”

“hey, sero, come here!” mina calls to sero in the distance, earning her a couple dirty glances from others in the gallery. “kaminari wants to look at the painting with y/n.”

oh, god, kaminari groans internally. sero, already walking toward the bench, flashes a knowing grin toward him.

“go get ‘em, champ.” sero pats kaminari on the back as the blond stands up, emitting a low, audible groan.

the four on the bench watch as your eyes light up at the approaching kaminari, who’s sheepishly scratching his neck. he says something - then you start again, rambling something about “impressionism” then “salon.” mina watches with clasped, anticipating hands; kirishima’s hand accidentally brushes bakugou’s, who’s holding a juice box and watching the two of you; sero simply smiles with knowledge that the others are unaware of.

“well, what do you think?” you finally ask kaminari, gesturing to the painting.

“uhh,” kaminari says. he was too busy staring at your face - the twinkle in your eyes, the curve of your lips - to pay attention to any of what you’d said. something about impressing and fleeting moments. he looks at the person depicted in the composition, then back to you. he remembers kirishima’s words - flirt a little bit more. it couldn’t hurt, could it?

“i think it’s pretty,” he leans into you, murmuring so he can be sure no one but you and he hears his words, “but it’s definitely not as pretty as you.”

you look down at yourself; then, for whatever reason, to sero. kaminari looks at sero, too, who’s wearing this stupid smile that sets unease in kaminari’s chest. he gives you two big thumbs-up. he’s so confused by sero’s behavior that he barely registers the light sensation of something on his cheek - a kiss. he looks at you, who’s looking away, then to the bench, where his friends are cheering despite the disapproving looks from those around them. he touches his cheek out of disbelief. light swells in his chest - it’s warm, so warm - but your aloof voice brings him back to reality (which really, isn’t much different from a dream).

“kaminari, you’re very red right now.”

“the two of you,” mina exclaims with the two of her hands clasped together in excitement over skype, “should go to a manga cafe!”

kaminari blinks. “as a date?”

“i wasn’t thinking about it like that.” mina nudges him, a sly smile creeping across her lips. “but hey, that works too. i mean, they did kiss y-”

kaminari cuts the pink-haired girl off before she can finish. “is that something… they’d want to do?”

“mmm…. probably,” mina says. “they were reading manga when you first met them right?”

he can vividly remember the somewhat tattered volume of conan, the detective turned little boy who must solve crime while hiding his own identity. really, the wear was only on the soft cover, nudged and peeling on the corners with faded text splayed on the spine. the pages were in crisp condition, he’d noted one day as he (totally, completely discreetly) watched you read the copy again. the bookshelf in your dorm and the stack of books on your desk is littered with different mangas, ranging from the old classics (astroboy) to some newer works (your lie in april). he only remembers this fact because he really, really wants to borrow a copy of black butler (yes, it’s the one with the maid on it. she looks really hot with a gun, okay?). all your manga are well-taken care of, cared for diligently as if each book has a piece of your heart in it. besides, you rarely lend out any (sero once asked to borrow jujutsu kaisen and you very, very reluctantly handed it to him), so he doubts you’d trust him with it.

“hang on, lemme ask sero if they’d be interested in a manga cafe,” mina says, pulling out her phone. “they’ve been close lately,” she mumbles as she types out a quick text to him, a quiet ping letting kaminari know that she’s sent it.

after a pause, mina excitedly reads sero’s reply: “yeah, probably.”

well, that was a definitive answer.

“there’s one nearby here,” mina offers. “hagakure told me good things about it, and she has a knack for finding the best spots in town. i’ll send you the address.”

“you think they’d like it?” kaminari says in an atypical bout of self-consciousness.

“of course,” mina replies instantly. “don’t you see how they look at you?”

usagi manga kissa makes kaminari cringe. it’s not the bunny-themed logo on the top of the building, nor is it the wide assortment of manga lining the walls, nor is it the cozy, soft seats nuzzled in the nooks and crannies of the café. it’s not even the life-sized cardboard cut-outs of various anime maid girls (he actually particularly really likes that detail). it’s the name itself. usagi is fine - kaminari likes bunnies as much as the next guy. manga is fine, too - he wouldn’t be here if not for the manga. the kissa makes him cringe for the most immature of reasons, like a five year old just learning basic english vocabulary. kissa innocently shortens the word kissaten, for cafeteria, but suspiciously sounds like the english word kiss. he does not want to think about kissing as he walks into the café with you, and especially not when the lady at the counter asks if you want a couples’ discount (you say yes, solely because it’s cheaper).

he does not want to think about kissing as he walks next to you, browsing the manga selection and passing the shoujo section that boasts illustrations of happy couples and romantic imagery. he doesn’t want to think about kissing as the two of you walk to a “couple’s” room, you rambling about the plot of the manga you chose and him with some shounen volleyball manga in his hand. kissing is the worst thing to think about as your knee touches his in the cramped apparent two-person room. he is not thinking about kissing at all when you offer him your water bottle, half full, and he’s definitely not thinking about indirect kissing or anything when he takes a sip. that would be crazy.

fortunate for him, his manga is full of not-kissing, so he’s able to somewhat enjoy it without his mind bombarding him with the fact that your face is less than a metre away. as he finishes up the volume, he realizes how much of a middle school student he feels like.

“y/n,” he looks up to you and says. you’re watching an old episode of neon genesis evangelion on the computer provided in the room, the manga you were reading sitting on the table beside the keyboard.

“yeah?” you respond and pause the anime. out of his peripherals, he can see you turn to look at him. he stares at the wall ahead of him, lacking the confidence to face you head-on.

“remember when we first met?” he reminisces.

“the cafe?” you say. “yeah.”

“if… i can ask,” he musters, “why did you say what you did then?”

you pause, taken aback. “i… i don’t know.”

“because,” kaminari starts, and you flinch, “i like you. a-and i know you said not to-”

a ghost has crossed your face. your mouth is agape, as if you suspected his feelings but never thought he’d verbalize them. he wonders what the kiss was about.

“i’m,” you gulp, breath stuttering, “i’m sorry.”

kaminari lied. five days later of zero contact with you, he realizes he’s in deep. he doesn’t like you - he’s in love with you. they say distance makes the heart grow fonder, and here he is, sifting through memories he had with you like they’re books. he should probably be studying instead of lying spread eagle on his bed, thinking of you. he can recall a promise made one night and the moment it was broken; he can remember the plastic stars he studied that night, falsely shining and lighting hope within him. he can remember dozens of constellations, half of which were geometric shapes, that he fell asleep to with you at his side. his heart aches, alighting a dull burn within him like a protostar barely able to burn hydrogen.

there’s a polite knock at his door, so he assumes it to be either kirishima or sero. mina always enters unannounced and bakugou is far too brash to knock softly. slowly - almost reluctantly - he sits up in bed, standing up and making his way to the door. he catches a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror, telling him that his hair is an absolute mess and in no way presentable. he figures that either kirishima or sero will comment about it, but he never needed to impress them in the first place. turning the knob and opening the door, he’s expecting either of his friends, maybe here to nag him or ask him to come and study or say “hey, why haven’t you spammed the group chat with memes in a while? i missed them.”

he definitely isn’t expecting you, face pulled into a worried expression and lips held in a thin, anticipating line before you meet his eyes. you’re pouring out a waterfall of apologies at a thousand words per second as soon as he opens the door, letting yourself in and hardly taking notice of his bird’s nest hair. he guides you to the couch, attempting to interject and ask you to slow down, but he finds that it sounds rude at any given moment. you’re sitting on the couch, lamentations and explanations spilling from your lips as you grip the plush material of the cushion you sit on, when you finally pause to take a breath. kaminari uses this opportunity to interrupt you.

“woah, woah, woah.” he hesitantly puts a hand on your shoulder. “can you back up?”

“oh, yeah,” you start to move back in your seat and kaminari stifles a laugh.

“no, can you start your story from the beginning?” he asks. “take your time, i’m not going anywhere.”

“i’m really, really sorry about what happened the other day,” you apologize, then look at him finally and ogle his hair. “i got… scared,” you admit earnestly. before he can make any question of it, you continue, “i like you too, see. and i never really, seriously acted on it - i didn’t want to. so when you did the inevitable and confessed… it scared me. the truth is… i’m not the best at romance or relationships. i don’t want to put anyone through that, again.” your voice wavers but finishes strong as you look kaminari in the eyes.

“that?” he asks. he’s afraid he’s crossed a line, but you reply all the same.

“i was in a relationship, once. i wasn’t… i wasn’t good enough. i didn’t do the things that people in a relationship are supposed to do, i guess.” you fiddle with the fabric of the couch, looking down at your fingers. your voice gives away the vulnerability of the topic, wrapped in a stiff disconnection; you’ve distanced yourself from it, probably once too familiar with the feelings you speak of.

“it’s okay,” kaminari says, almost too quickly. he slows himself down. “that’s… completely fine,” he admits truthfully. “we can go slow. i… i can wait.”

“can you?” you look up at him, hope shining your eyes. it dims quickly before you say, “you don’t have to. i don’t want to limit you…”

“the only person i want is you,” he reassures you, hesitantly taking your hand in his. “you’re not…” he struggles for words, “...limiting me if i don’t have eyes for anyone else.”

“are you sure?” it’s an almost inaudible whisper, clutching your hopes in three words that are held together by thin threads.

“i’ve never been more sure,” kaminari replies confidently, giving your hand an encouraging squeeze.

“okay,” you breathe out, relief tingeing your speech. “i… want to be with you.”

it takes everything in kaminari not to kiss you right there.

“oh, by the way-” you say, standing up from the couch and leaving kaminari to sit alone, “did you still want to borrow that copy of black butler?”

“the one with the maid who has a gun?” kaminari asks, eyes wide. how did you know about that?

“yeah. you kept staring at it before, so i assumed…”

“yeah. yeah, no, yeah, that’d be really great. amazing, actually. wonderful. stupendous-” kaminari shuts himself up before he can ramble on longer.

“okay, give me a second,” you respond, smiling, and exit to the hallway to retrieve the manga.

you return with the volume in hand, placing it in kaminari’s hands.

“thanks,” he says as he glides his thumb over the glossy cover and mint condition. it’s heavier than kaminari thought, and it feels like the weight of a heart. he’ll be sure to take extra care of it, holding it with ginger fingers and a sweet, sweet feeling in his chest.

#kaminari x reader #kaminari fluff #kaminari angst #bnha x reader #bnha fluff #bnha angst #denki kaminari #kaminari denki #bnha #luna's writing #kaminari headcanons #bnha headcanons

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