#the others didn’t do anything wrong but i think qq was in the sort of state that would have lead to him being overwhelmed by everything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aelaer · 4 years

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[1/2] Now this is an actual ask as in asking for help. 👀 I have a problem with Steve and Tony. I spent too much time too early on reading anti/not-friendly post-CW fics about 'Team Cap', and because of that I have been unable to see Tony as a flawed human or Steve as a good person. It's a pattern I've become too familiar with, and even recent stories are often going into that sense. I have been trying for some time now to do something about it, but either the method was bad, or I couldn't

(I tagged a couple people in this post – if you were tagged, the question directed to you is wayyyy at the bottom! Feel free to ignore of course.)

You really hit me with a doozy with this ask. I might offend someone for not thinking the exact same way as them with… everything this topic entails… Steve, Tony, anti-fics. Followers from last year know what happened last time I talked about poor and OOC characterization in fanfic, lmao. Beware The Easily Offended! This Is A Critical Thinking Of Your Hobby Zone! I Am Being Critical Of Specific Types of MCU Fanfic!

Please don’t click the read more button if you can’t handle an opinion that might not match yours. Really. I’m fine with discussing different opinions in a mature manner but if you have issues with people saying they don’t like a specific type of plot, this post is not for you. (The read more button doesn’t appear on the original post for followers using the mobile app, but it works on desktop and in all reblogs. If you don’t see a cut and don’t want to read, just skip it, please).

Yeah. Okay. Moving on. Can’t say folks weren’t warned.

I’ve had this in my drafts for several weeks because of the abuse I got the last time I wrote something critical about certain plot points used in fanfic. I was definitely a bit reluctant to look at this specific topic from an analytical and critical look as I remembered that, but hey, it’s really easy for a coward to use a sockpuppet account and throw abuse. It’s harder to be a minority voice with stark opinions contrasting the popular trend. I’m okay with having a minority opinion amongst the MCU fandom.

(PS - you’re welcome to disagree with my opinions, so long as you’re respectful about it. Remember there are individuals behind the screens!)

Concerning Character Flaws

So the thing about really well-written characters is that they are flawed in some manner. Anyone who thinks Tony or Steve exist without flaws – and I mean real flaws, like arrogance, believing they’re always right, short tempers, and other *real* character flaws that both of these characters have – well, if they don’t think they exist with these flaws, how well do they know the character?

You don’t have to know a character well to be a fan of said character – there’s no rules about that – but if you’re going to write fanfic, and that fanfic entails the character you love against a character you don’t particularly like, I’d say any writer looking to do anything resembling a good job would do their due diligence in figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of both characters before writing the characters themselves. These mental lists of characteristics should be equal for both characters. No, “good abs” is not a character strength if you have no physical aspects in the other character strength column. You don’t have to like a character to still write them well.

Even professionals don’t follow this rule when, say, shows get new writers or comics get different writers, so you might consider me silly expecting those dabbling in fan fiction. But yeah, if an author wants me to take a story seriously as something with quality, I expect the characters to resemble themselves in some manner.

(This level of resemblance varies when you purposefully choose for the protagonist to be evil, be in a completely different time period, etc, but authors who do this *well* still get core personality traits solid, even if morality is out the window or the profession is entirely different. I have a lot of examples from the Sherlock fandom of total AUs that pull this off well – haven’t read nearly enough AUs in the MCU to have a good collection here).

But a resemblance of character, of capturing the three-dimensionality of a character, is what anti-fics simply fail to achieve. The characters they’re anti against usually suffer cases of Flanderization, if they’re not completely out of character altogether in showing traits that were never displayed in the canon, ever. I don’t know why anyone would be interested in such stories, myself, and remain baffled at their popularity. Is there some sort of enjoyment in seeing such a 2D rendition of a character in what is otherwise meant as a serious work and provides absolutely no sense of proper conflict between two characters? Not for me; it immediately takes me out of the story and when it gets too much, I abandon the story. It’s just not enjoyable for me. Turning a canon protagonist into a strawman is just lazy writing and offers nothing to the writer’s favorite, preferred character.

Concerning Steve’s and Tony’s Flaws

Every real human being has some sort of personality flaw that is decidedly unattractive. Some people are really good at showing it very rarely (and are some of the best human beings), but with these two characters we see them at their greatest heights and lowest of lows. Ironically, they actually share a lot of the same flaws, but display them in different manners in canon:

Both men believe they are the best man for the job and will do it without consulting someone who could actually fight against it - or go completely against them. Tony with Ultron is the easy example here. He’s the smartest man in the world and can tackle the issue of protecting it on its own. Steve, same issue, and his job is “helping Bucky”. *He’s* the one who can handle Bucky, the only one who can handle him - big thing in both WS and CW. If both of them had utilized their friends and allies a lot more, a lot of issues could have been avoided.

Both men are sometimes hypocritical. Steve promotes teamwork in all his speeches but again with the Bucky situation. Just… everything Bucky, man. Tony signs the Accords and immediately goes against them with what he gives to Peter, who most assuredly did not sign them (tangent: if he HAD joined the Avengers at the end of Homecoming, I have no idea how that would have gone since Peter would have had to reveal his identity to the UN and then there’s the whole ‘still a minor’ thing, and yeah, Homecoming’s end scene just makes me go nuts). But anyway, their occasional hypocrisy is one of the most realistic aspects of them because most human beings are hypocritical sometimes.

Both men are sometimes arrogant. Tony’s self-explanatory with his genius-playboy-philanthropist-billionaire. One thing he does not suffer from is low self-esteem in regards to his abilities. His arrogance comes from his genius. Steve’s arrogance lies more in his deep-seeded belief that he is on the moral high ground – and one reason I think a lot of people dislike him so much, because moral superiority is very much a faux pas in this day and age for some millennials and many Gen Z folk. He has a very, very solid sense of what is right and what is wrong, and that rubs some folks the wrong way. Tony is more morally fluid – but he is not by any means immoral.

Both of them have a really solid list of strengths as well. As this ask specifically is looking to find the good in Steve, I specifically Googled pro-Steve articles for you to click at your leisure (and one with both). If you need to go back to canon, I highly recommend rewatching The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier, which introduces Steve brilliantly and then lets Steve grow further in the second film.

(Note: I actually prefer Tony to Steve in terms of personal favoritism, but how a very loud segment of Tony fans have treated other characters has led me to be more vocal about the strengths of others, especially Steve and Wanda. So Tony might be in my top 5, but mean-spirited Tony fans have moved me to be a champion of other characters, if only to show other fans that there are indeed Tony fans that do like the other characters and treat them – and their fans – with respect).

Bringing Balance (to the Universe…) Fanfic-Style

This addresses the second part of your ask in regards to the fanfics. And this is where I started running into trouble, too, mostly because, well, just how many Stephen and Steve fics are there? Yeah, exactly. Stephen’s my main guy. So I did some research, outsourcing, and reading.

Here’s two I knew of before cuz Stephen’s in them in some capacity:

Identity Theft by KitKat992 - it stars Peter and both Tony and Steve play integral parts from what I recall. Good story too, very engaging.

A Dysfunctional Senior Year (series) by ApolloLoki97 - this also stars Peter and has a large Team As Family aspect, so it shows the entire Avengers team as just decent people. My favorite part is naturally part 3 because Stephen comes in that one, haha.

And to find other stories, I went into the Anti-Accords tag. It was nice to find fics that didn’t have such a love of hypocritical authoritarianism. Aannyyyyway.

Making Sense of Chaos by SparkedtoLife - mind the tags. Seriously, it’s heavy duty. Yet another Peter fic because he’s way more popular than my favorite character, qq. Lots of Netflix Marvel characters too! Anyway, deals with not only Tony and Steve really well (and has a different dynamic with Tony that isn’t IronDad, so that was a nice change of pace), it also deals with the Accords situation very realistically. And none of those are even main plot points. If you can handle the very serious, sensitive subject that is the main plot point, I highly recommended it. It’s a very masterfully done work.

Atlas by nanasekei - Stony. Treats all characters with respect and both Tony and Steve as three-dimensional, flawed humans with some serious self doubts. Also highly agree with the author that Thaddeus Ross sucks and is basically one of the biggest people to blame for Everything Going To Shit.

Homecoming by an orphaned account - Some Stucky. This is a lovely one-shot of things I basically wanted to happen when the team got together again but didn’t. Sigggghhh. Everyone is definitely in character in this one, traumas and healing and all. And look, another person realizes that trusting Ross is a really horrible idea.

Locks Not Replaced by Riverdaughter - first this writer has a Tolkien-based username so yay. Anyway, the fic starts off by Tony realizing that he almost killed Steve during the fight with his repulsors, and it was only Bucky that stopped him. Do people seriously think he’d survive a shot to the face with that power? This is one reason the ‘Steve tried to kill Tony’ people piss me the fuck off. What do you think those repulsors shoot, fucking rainbows? Honestly, guys. Anyway, mini rant over. This fic is great. Author comes in with a Cap favoritism but treats Tony well, and honestly Tony turning a blind eye to everything and ignoring Ross is what I like to think happened in canon (he clearly dislikes the guy). And also I love the Robin Hood parallels. Love love love. I think this fic is my favorite of the ones listed in this section.

Meeting Your Heroes by Riverdaughter - naturally after reading that fic I went to explore more and found this gem. She’s not incorrect in saying Tony wasn’t a good mentor at the beginning - I think he had his own growth after Peter’s actions in Homecoming especially (though even through Homecoming he was trying, just… not always successfully lmao). Anyway love these two together. It’s great.

Photograph by slytherclaw420 - A scene we deserved in Endgame and didn’t get. Sigh. Definite IronDad feels here. Hopeful Steve, rebuilding of a friendship.

And uh, an honorable mention of sorts:

Balancing the Scales by MoonFire1 - I’m not recommending this fic for good characterization or plot. It really doesn’t have either. The fic was written in retaliation for the nasty Tony fans completely trashing Steve’s character. You should only read this if you want to see the argument from “the other side” and if you want to see an anti-Tony fic like you’ve seen anti-Steve fics. Don’t harass the author though. This is presented as a counterargument to anti-Steve fiction, for those interested to read the other sides arguments. I don’t like the nature of the fic, but I loathe that “not Steve friendly” has 30 fucking pages of works with tens of thousands of kudos, so one anti-Tony fic (with a comparatively small three pages under that tag) really doesn’t compare. Ugh. I hate the anti culture in this fandom so much. Loathe it. It’s such a nasty energy! Why would you indulge in such negativity? But as I’ve mentioned before, I appreciate authors aware enough to tag it so I can avoid it. I wish that part of fandom culture didn’t exist, but well, can’t change it. Just can criticize the fuck out of it on my blog. Maybe encourage people to think less one-sided in the process if I’m lucky.

But there’s probably more good characterization Steve fics to be found, so I am forcefully recruiting two people via tag:

If you’re looking to dabble into Stony fics with good-guy-Steve, if anyone would know of any, I’d imagine it’d be @babywarg.

You don’t know this person, but @cairistiona7 has actually known me the longest of anyone here on tumblr (half my life! HALF! She even knows my real name :P She betaed a LOTR work of mine a decade ago I ended up never fully publishing… thanks again for all your help there…). Anyway, she’s a big Bucky fan, and Bucky friendships is the best thing. So if anyone would know any wholesome Bucky and Steve stories, it’d be her. (Or really I’d take any of your recs, Cair, as I’ll probably enjoy them as well).

I hope this was helpful to you md, and that I didn’t piss off too many of my followers in the process of answering this lol.

#mdcbd #tony stark critical #steve rogers critical #meta #the sokovia accords #character analysis #tony stark #steve rogers #peter parker #since he's in a lot of the fics #fic rec #ask #answered #anti culture

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inziliel · 5 years

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TheWonderfulShoe’s Bumblebee Billboard Hits Challenge

I don’t know why, giving that I basically never use Tumblr, I decided to do this...but hello from inziliel or TheWonderfulShoe!

I finally watched the movie Bumblebee recently, and I actually thought it was pretty cute and fun. The opening scene blew my mind, honestly, since I somehow managed to avoid basically all spoilers (a miracle!) So, I was chatting with some fantastic people, some of whom write fanfiction or do fanart for the series (some Bumblee!centric, but also those who do general Transformers love or other/mixed continuities), and we were coming up with song ideas to help one of the bunch write.

When I was driving later, a few Beatles songs came on my shuffle, and I randomly had the thought...what if there were a challenge using some Billboard Hits for various years? The Bumblee movie focused on 80s music (though there were some others, too) and previous Bay-verse movies have had some variety, though often well-known ones from which Bee could have taken clips almost anywhere/anytime. Somehow this clicked very suddenly into a decision that I needed to pick 5-10 songs from each Billboard Hits year from 1960-2018 (since Year End 2019 won’t be out yet for a bit) and make some challenge rules...

YOU ARE ALL WELCOME. FOR THE BUMBLEBEE BILLBOARD HITS CHALLENGE YOU NEVER NEEDED OR WANTED HONESTLY.

(So without further ado...)

TheWonderfulShoe’s Bumblebee Billboard Hits Challenge

You must choose 3 years (HARD MODE 5 YEARS, EASY MODE 2 years) from 1960-2018

You may “cherry-pick” these by looking through songs and picking years to have songs you would like (see next bullet)...

Or you can make the challenge more difficult by randomizing the songs. (If your fic takes place at a certain year, you may still count it as randomized if you randomize only up through the year of/year before your fic takes place.)

Each year you use, you must include 3 songs (HARD MODE 5 songs, EASY MODE 2 songs) from the Top 100 End of Year Charts (recommended to use the Top 10 Hits from each year, but any song from Top 100 is allowed), and use at least one clip from each as dialogue.

Simply singing (karaoke or just leisure), or ambient music, will not count as successfully using the source song as a song for that year. (Though of course, you may include as much singing or ambient music as you desire--it’s your work! These songs just won’t count for the challenge!)

Singing or playing the song to somebody (as in singing the words to them, or playing the song to them) to purposefully communicate meaning through the words of the song, can count. (Since this is how Bee generally communicates!)

Limitation: Only 1 song per year chosen (HARD MODE max of only 1 song in the completed work, EASY MODE 1 song per chapter if multi-chapter piece) may be used by somebody other than Bumblebee.

(As a disclaimer, I have no affiliation with any music-y or record-y things or websites. However, to be helpful, a quick search did show me to this page, which seems to have each year’s Top 100. I am also working on my own list, which will hopefully be about 5-10 songs from each year that I thought had some value or sounded fun or whatever other reason just prompted me to list it IDK everybody, it’s chaos in this brain!)

List the songs/artists/years at the end of each chapter (or of the work, if it is a one-shot sort of piece).

OFFICIAL VARIANTS:

No1HitStyle: Rather than using 3 songs from 3 years, pick 9 years (or randomize the years) and specifically use the #1 Hit of the year!

(To help you, the Pop, R&B/Blues, and Country “tops” are listed on this wiki page, apparently.)

BeastMode: For those who truly like suffering...complete the “BEAST MODE” of the challenge by using 5 songs from each year.

As in, every year in the challenge (1960-2018)! Not that you’d be disqualified for doing more--like from the start of Billboard Hits in 1940--or anything...but seriously, TheWonderfulShoe does not endorse that degree of suffering JUST THINK OF THE CHILDREN QQ

If you do this...by all means, please tag #beastmode in it! I would really love to see these!

SummerHitsStyle: Take the songs from the Summer Hits lists for the years!

By all means, recommend a variant for me to put up here, or develop extra or variation rules for yourself! Would love to see some!

Happy writing, everyone...I can’t wait to see some of these!! :D

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a prize for winning this challenge?

Erm, bragging rights? Some idiotTheWonderfulShoe being very impressed with you? But otherwise...well, no. No, there is not.

Why keep the “TWS” you egotistical bas in the name/tag?

When I tried just “BBHC” it was already being used for something popular, or so it claimed. I didn’t want to look or cause tag-confusion awkwardness.

What is wrong wit How did you come up with this craziness, Shoe?

I have long since wonde ...IDK, friend. It just popped into my brain and I couldn’t let it go until I posted it up somewhere.

Aren’t there more questions people ask?

...okay look, it’s still pretty new, but I tried to preempt as many questions as I could, but I was really tired when I put this up.

By all means, feel free to send questions if you have some, and I’ll hopefully update the FAQs if I get asked stuff a lot. (Though I may just respond directly if I can. TBH, IDEK HOW THIS WORKS.)

#bumblebee #writingchallenge #fanfiction #transformers #charbee #TWSBBHC #bumblebeebillboardhitschallenge

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nadiarizavi · 6 years

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BETCHA DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING,,,,,,

people were asking for a part 2 of the fro-yo date so..... yes....... it was really nice to revisit this fic!!! please look forward to part three qq

here’s part one!

Class ended two hours ago.

At least, if Lance was keeping his time right. And he was pretty sure he was.

Pidge was burning daylight, forcing him to wait for her.

He thought it would be a little creepy, to try and hang out in front of her dorm room and surprise her when she finally stepped out in her daytime glory. Did Pidge have a daytime glory? Was he imagining some sort of fantasy girl that didn’t really exist? How was Pidge’s daily routine? Clearly it was pretty messed up if she spent a couple of nights every week doing homework before the asscrack of dawn, right?

The anxiety was starting to get to him. He drummed his leg a little bit faster.

She wouldn’t have cancelled on him, right? Maybe he was wrong about when her classes ended. But she told him her schedule! He was pretty great at remembering things, but Pidge usually wasn’t, so maybe she did forget? Should he text her? Would it be annoying to text her?

Why was he so damn nervous?

Focus on something else.

His eyes drifted around the common room. It wasn’t particularly big, no, but it was comfortable. A small kitchen, a couple of couches and chairs and a television to sit and watch. A couple of guys had turned on Indiana Jones but were barely paying attention. Another girl was making herself a sandwich. He could hear a conversation down the hall, as more people approached the commons.

His heart began to hammer a little harder in his chest.

It wasn’t a date. Maybe. Pidge just called it a date by accident. Lance certainly didn’t want to think it was a date. After all, it was just Pidge and frozen yogurt. Just him and his weird night owl friend and a couple of bowls of delicious fro-yo.

Then he saw her.

It was a little disorienting, to say the least. He didn’t recognize her for a moment. Usually, he couldn’t make out Pidge’s features, because the commons at night were dark and she refused to turn on the light because “McClain, that wastes energy and we are not about to become earth murderers,” or something. He stood up quickly, smoothing out the wrinkles in his jacket, running a quick hand through his hair as Pidge got closer.

For someone he thought of as a friend, it was like meeting her for the first time.

She has freckles.

That was the first coherent thought Lance had.

“Hello McClain,” Pidge chirped, raising a hand in greeting. Green sweater, dark blue overalls. Beat up sneakers. Not what he expected. Or everything he expected?

A smattering of freckles.

Remember to speak, idiot.

“Uh. Hello! Yo. Hi, Pidge.”

Smooth like butter.

Pidge switched the weight of her footing, head cocking as she stared up at him. Her hair was tawny. Her eyes were honey.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Lance blinked.

“The hell do you mean?”

She splayed her arms, doing a dramatically slow spin. “I’m here. During the day. The forbidden hours.”

He barked out a laugh. “I didn’t expect you to look so…”

He paused, biting his tongue. What was he going to say? Normal? Stylish? Pretty?

“What?”

“Well rested.”

There we go, settle with the joke. Pidge liked jokes.

“I didn’t expect you to look like a jackass.”

“Ah, that’s the Pidge I know and adore. Shall we?”

He offered his arm. She ignored him and pressed onwards.

“We shall.”

And it wasn’t a quiet journey. Lance would’ve preferred him and Pidge not having anything to talk about, in hindsight. He would’ve preferred a quiet, seemingly awkward walk to the bus stop without anything to talk to her about.

But Pidge was a secret powerhouse.

It threw him off, again. Lance hadn’t seen this side of Pidge before, ever. She was always… awkwardly chatty, to put it mildly. But here, beneath a bright blue sky and a shining sun, Pidge had an almost impenetrable air of absolute cool radiating off of her. She had a way of somehow knowing almost every person the pair passed by. A greeting there, a short breeze of a question that she seemed to know all the answers to, whether it was about a class meeting, a due date, a general “how’s your day going?”

“You’re… pretty popular,” Lance said casually, as she waved goodbye to a leaving pair of girls who had stopped her to ask about their next robotics meeting. Robotics. He didn’t know she was in the robotics club.

“I do a lot of extracurriculars,” Pidge said, unphased by the inquiry. “It keeps me busy between classes.”

“Jesus, and you still can’t find the time to get a good night of sleep?”

She laughed at him, throwing her head back as she did. “You know, I thought the same thing! One of these days I’ll finally have enough on my plate to knock my ass out at the sound, reasonable hour of… midnight.”

Lance instinctively elbowed her shoulder.

“Maybe push for two in the morning, first.”

“Har-har.”

He wasn’t sure when it happened during their stroll, but he was hyper-aware of it now. The weight of Pidge’s hand in his. It must’ve come naturally to him, or to her, or to both of them, because it wasn’t until they were at the bus stop did he realize she was swinging his arm with hers. Gently, almost unnoticeable, if Lance didn’t realize it was happening.

He gave her hand a squeeze, to test her, to see if Pidge also realized that at some indistinguishable walk from point A to B, their hands had intertwined.

She squeezed back.

And then the bus rolled up.

It was crowded, much to Lance’s expectation, and he wondered, quietly, if Pidge was alright with that. He looked back towards her as she filed in line behind him, and fortunately caught her eye. A smile.

“What?”

“Is… uh…” Lance looked around. “The crowding okay for you?”

“I’m not claustrophobic if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Oh. Cool, cool.”

There was a long pause, as Lance vice gripped the handgrip above him and the bus began to move. Pidge took hold of his other hand, not too tightly, the rest of her body leaning into the pole next to her.

“You’re claustrophobic?” came her voice. Lance let out a strained laugh.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not,” Pidge said, and she returned to swinging his hand in hers. “I would never.”

The words were reassuring in a way Lance didn’t expect them to be. She gave him a sincere smile, and despite the lack of movement available, got as far away from him as she could. But she never did let go of his hand. Not until their stop came up in the city, and she had to let him go to ring the bell to be let off the bus.

It was a nice day for frozen yogurt, Lance decided.

It was a brisk walk to find the fated frozen yogurt place, because if Lance was honest, it wasn’t hard to find. A soft pink exterior, blue and white striped umbrellas, a neon sign that flashed the word “OPEN” like a lighthouse beckoning ships home. Pidge beat him to the door, swinging it open and bowing to him as he came up, as if she was a professional in opening doors for people.

“My good sir,” Pidge said, her voice dripping in a mocking posh accent. Lance let out a hard laugh, poking her in the shoulder as he stepped through the threshold.

“You’re so dumb.”

“Hey! That makes two of us. Twice the dumbasses.”

They fed into the line, which was about three other people in front of them, eyes reading over the different slowly-spinning machines filled with about twenty different frozen yogurt flavors.

“Are you a fruit or chocolate person?” Pidge asked, hands aimlessly twisting and turning her empty fro-yo container.

“I usually go for fruit flavors. Why?”

“Interesting. I like chocolate.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“With like, peanut butter cups.”

“Again, not shocking.”

“And sour patch kids.”

Lance blinked, giving Pidge a double-take. For a brief, bliss moment, he had fallen for it.

That is, until he saw the shit-eating grin she was giving him.

“I dare you to do that.”

“What? No! That totally messes up my carefully curated flavor profile, McClain!”

Lance shrugged, trying to keep his smile on lockdown, not when this was the perfect opportunity to act nonchalant. “Maybe you shouldn’t have suggested it.”

“God, if you’re daring me to do that, then…” She spends a long time thinking. Almost too long. “All the toppings.”

“That renders it inedible!”

“If you do it, I’ll do it. Then we’ll both have inedible frozen yogurt.”

“That completely misses the point of getting frozen yogurt.”

She grinned. “Then I guess we’d have to make it up by going out again, right?”

And despite himself, Lance’s heart stammered to a stop.

Going out.

Again?

With him?

Pidge crouched, maneuvering around Lance, talking as she makes her way to her preferred brownie fudge flavor. “So, are we doing this or not?”

“Uh,” Lance began, standing up straighter, aware of the heat that went from the tips of his ears to his toes. “Doing what?”

“All the toppings. Duh.”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.”

He trailed behind her, almost aimless, and Lance’s mind went a mile a minute. He couldn’t have a crush on her, right? She was just his weird gremlin night-owl friend. She was his weirdly comforting rock in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep and it was nice to walk into the commons and just find her existing in that space. She was some turd who listened to him vent and gave weird advice and always had something to say that made him laugh. She was just Pidge, after all.

Maybe that’s what he liked about her, that she was just Pidge.

She had a look of triumph on her face when they reached the end of the toppings line, while the employee gave them both a confused, tired look. They paid a lot more than just his savings from the failed blind date. Not that either seemed to mind.

“This is disgusting,” Lance said, once they decided to settle in one of the outdoor sitting areas. Pidge let out a laugh, lifting up a spoonful of toppings with hardly any yogurt.

“Just close your eyes and pretend you’re not eating a horrifying amalgamation of sugary, fruity, savory, chocolatey--”

“I got the gist of it. Please stop.”

She let out another laugh, digging her spoon into the horror, mixing as carefully as she could. “So what’s the plan after we eat as much of this monster yogurt as we can?”

Lance blinked, weighing a spoonful of Oreo cookie bits and gummy bears. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” she leaned in, spearing her yogurt with the spoon. “Do you want to keep hanging out, Lance?”

“Well, obviously. We’re friends,” he stressed the last word, hoping to convince himself. “It’d be dumb if I wanted to stop hanging out with you.”

She studied him for a moment, head bobbing up and down in slow motions. “Okay. Yeah, you’re right. It’d be dumb if we stopped hanging out with each other.”

She dug back into her yogurt, eating a bit faster, and Lance cocked his head to the side.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

A stop. A crunch of a bad combination of toppings.

“I like hanging out with you,” Pidge said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “But this was weird, right? Hanging out like… like normal people.”

Her voice dropped as she said it, a teasing grin on her lips. Lance snorted.

“It’s only weird if you make it weird, you know.”

“I know! But it’s like,” she waved her spoon at him. “We’re totally different people out here. No one understands our dynamic. It’s so exposing.”

Lance let out a laugh, almost shy. “Who cares, dude? I like you. Not what people think of you.”

She froze in her stance, spoon dripping chocolate frozen yogurt onto the table, and Lance moved quick to clean it up with a napkin. Slowly, Pidge dropped her spoon back into her bowl, gaze unwavering from Lance. He looked back, beaming.

“What’s up now, Pidge?”

“Sorry. That was just a really nice thing to say. I like you too, Lance.”

There was warmth in her tone, warmth that was almost too easy for Lance to read as anything other than platonic. It made his heart stammer. It made his knees weak. But he wasn’t going to let that show.

Quickly, he jabbed his own spoon towards her nose, letting out a shit-eating laugh.

“You called me Lance again!”

#plance #pidgance #flirtyrobot #amaje fics

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