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tellytubby101Behind the Masks and Monitors.
Summary: Steve/Tony. Meta!AU. BNF cap_usa comes back from a 7 year hiatus, fandom rejoices, and users begin to wonder why the LJ servers are always crashing. (Hint: it isn’t the Russians this time.)
masterpost | next >>DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ THIS IN YOUR JOURNAL'S LAYOUT OR MY DEFAULT JOURNAL LAYOUT. PLEASE READ WITH THE HANDLE ?format=light ON THE URL. Otherwise the formatting is just horrific.
==
As always, it begins on Twitter:
@spideysenses: HOLY SHIT, CAP_USA IS BACK ONLINE FOLKS!!! 7 YEAR HIATUS OVER~!?
It really should go without saying that within minutes of this tweet, S.H.I.E.L.D fandom explodes.
==
little guy from brooklyn (cap_usa) wrote,
Wow, I can’t believe how many people still look at my fanart. I’m touched, guys, thank you! I don’t know whether I will be able to address several years of backlog, but I want you to know I’m reading every single comment.
Sorry I’ve been gone so long (everything in LJ and DA looks so different; I feel a little lost, technology’s progressed so quickly, though I should have guessed). I’m back for a good while now though. Even after all this time, fandom feels like home.
Since it seems like most of my f-list stuck with me even after my extended radio silence:
Any good recs?
(87 comments) – (Post a new comment)
==
thelady-s reblogged don-blake
don-blake:
tinman:
cap_usa being back from the dead, like Jesus made me think of prompting
zombie!AU fic at the meme
but we always need MOAR zombie fic, preferably with bonus orgy scene, so I wrote it
don’t worry, it ain’t a zombie orgy—I need to be more drunk to accomplish that—though
I do admit wanting to pun the term “eating out” in smut more often
yea yea writing ain’t my main shtick these days, in b4 stick with the vidding/manips,
but IDGAF i can’t be stuffed waiting, enjoy/ nsfw (lol, like that stops any of u)
Read More →
#PERFECTION #did you just #wait, your AN #cap_usa = zombie!jesus #new headcanon
Source: tinman #my life is complete #DYING #trufax #winning #whentagsareart
==
can kick your ass in six inch heels (rescue14) wrote in shield_hq,
RECLIST of BEST MASTERPOSTS for BEGINNERS
If you want to start in S.H.I.E.L.D fandom, ladies and gentlemen, clear your weekend schedule; here are the journals you MUST visit first:
+FIC
bullseye’s fic masterpost; Ao3
– he ships everyone with everyone, so if you want to find your ship, go to him; don’t get freaked out if he makes you ship ALL THE SHIPS though, he’s known for that; well, he’s also known for some of the fucking hottest smut, some of which definitely NSFW
silvertongue’s fic masterpost; specifically, the Cradlerobbing Chronicles (65k+)
–despite being better known for his art, he will occasionally deign us mere mortals with some fantastic fic full of worldbuilding and intense characterisation; if you don’t cry once while reading, you have a heart of stone, but be doubly sure to read all warnings (NOTE: n00bs/civilians DO NOT ENGAGE IN WANK/ARGUMENTS; HE WILL DESTROY YOU AND HACK YOUR ACCOUNT IF YOU PISS HIM OFF ENOUGH or if you catch him when he’s feeling particularly sadistic)
jekyllhyde’s fic masterpost; Ao3
–focuses on character development and general feel-good adventures; majority of the work is gen; it’s kind of weird how PG his fic is when you compare to the NC-17 violence of his art, but all of his work is absolutely gorgeous, fic or art
pseudo_zeus’s fic masterpost
–PWPs galore, serial multishipper, hard, dirty, fast, holy mother of god, amazing smut, obv. NSFW. Best place to look for odd kinks; social convention flies right over his head and he writes pretty much any kink if you ask nicely, OR if you’re stupid enough to issue a challenge (warnings for ... everything)
widowmaker’s fic the Arachnophobia series masterpost
–hands down one of the best series ever written within comicverse, well over 80k in six parts with several codas, and to top it all off, it’s well written FEMSLASH; never enough femslash in the world, but this keeps you satisfied, trust me; NSFW
iamironman’s Atriums and Metal series, and his meta discussion on actors’ slash pandering attempts
–there is a certain dry wit iamironman has; takes a little getting used to the subtleties and his sarcasm, not to mention his penchant for crossfandom referencing, but once you do, it is utterly mindblowing work. R-rating, barely SFW, and that’s if you have an awesome boss
+FANART
cap_usa’s art masterpost, deviantart
–LEGENDARY BNF, the one who kickstarted fandom and kept it going through the dry spells; best artist of the internets, uses mixed mediums, favouring sketches but equally skilled with tablets and the like; to date has inspired 42 other fanworks from his own; unfortunately MIA for several years now edit: he’s back! and he’s promising to bring us more of the ~pretty
silvertongue’s art masterpost and tumblr (banned twice from deviantart)
–definitely NSFW; lots of violence, smut, bloodkink, D/s, bondage, humiliation kink; some small comic series (watch out for the animated ones, those are insane and mildly traumatising)
jekyllhyde’s art masterpost, deviantart and tumblr
–incredibly violent, but damn, look at all the pretty; I think jekyllhyde likes ‘em best shirtless looking comfortably fucked out, but hell I’m not complaining here
+VIDEOS
iamironman’s vid masterpost; .gifs
–creator of some of the best fanvids any fandom has ever seen; though he isn’t afraid of mixing canon footage with fanart with legit porn scenes (does it tastefully though, thank god), so if you’re worried about seeing your fav character bumping uglies, you may want to skip his NC-17 vids... NSFW; also does a ton of a lot of manips, mostly PG/R, this guy knows his way around photoshop
+MISC.
(Read more...)
(34 comments) – (Post a new comment)
==
it’s always the quiet ones to look out for (paperpusher) wrote in shield_hq,
BIG BANG SIGNUP
Since _boss is out for the week—no doubt on a top secret mission attacking Tumblebeasts or fighting DDoS from LJ servers with his bare hands, knowing him—y’all have the pleasure of having me as your main mod for the time being. The winter solstice is soon upon us, so that means the Big Bang is being held again!
Read the rules, learn the rules, love the rules, because you’re going to have to follow them, NO EXCEPTIONS. I’m looking at you, silvertongue. If I have to pull some online OT to keep this BB on track, I will be using the ban hammer. Again, looking at you, silvertongue.
(more info on schedule and themes/prompts under cut)
(16 comments) – (Post a new comment)
==
Tony finally shuts down his laptop, walking around his flat and stretching his arms and legs out. His muscles are cramped from being in one position for so long, but the movement burns in a good way, and he opens all the windows in the room up by several inches, just enough to let the night air in.
It’s late, he doesn’t even need to look at the clock, because it’s always late when he finally pries himself from the computer, eyes blurring at the edges with strain and fatigue. Tony’s only human, he knows his limits, and he’d prefer to keep his eyesight through to old age. Though, he muses, it wouldn’t be beyond the scope of his capabilities to develop a robotic eye, perhaps even get it functioning within a half-decade with the right funding and enough effort.
His mind races and his fingers itch to get back onto the keyboard. Too many ideas to control, flashing in and out of his consciousness. Sleep will be difficult now, but he has to refrain from logging back in.
There is a 7:30AM meeting he has to attend tomorrow, one that for some inexplicable reason requires him to be prepared over an hour earlier. Despite being able to function on the bare minimum of sleep, Tony still needs it, like a robot that needs to occasionally power down before burning out all its circuits. Not for the first time, he considers skipping the meeting, but he’s already ducked out of attending the last two.
He throws back his heart medication, dry swallows, feels them move down his throat and settle in his stomach. Tony hates taking the pills, but Pepper always seems to know when he doesn’t, and while he hates those fucking pills do damn much, he hates disappointing her more.
Cracking his neck, popping his spine, Tony stretches one last time, languidly, as he makes his way from the study to his bedroom. He plods over to his bed, grinning faintly at the sight of Jarvis and Dummy asleep together on his pillow. A scowl soon replaces it when he realises that he has to sleep on that, and oh god, why both of them, there’s damn cat hair everywhere—
With uncanny timing, Jarvis opens one eye in a slit, as if to say to Tony, I dare you to touch me right now, I dare you to move me. Sighing, Tony rolls his eyes and slides under the covers. He knows when to pick his battles and carefully moves around his pets, resting his head on his arms instead. Dummy starts purring in his ear and Tony falls to sleep with a tentative smile, like these simple pleasures are already too much to ask for.
==
Tony is thirty-two, single, and the top researcher at the R&D department of Stark Enterprises. It’s only a coincidence that his surname matches the company name, really. Don’t try to imply anything otherwise. (He wouldn’t work there at all, if he had a choice, but there is no other American corporation with an anti-weaponry stance as firm as this one.)
The main thing to know about Tony Stark is that he’s a genius. Not just brilliant, but revolutionary. The inventions he has patented over the last two years alone have created more revenue than all of the other researchers have done in the last decade combined. He is the envy of every electronics manufacturer in the world. It’s little wonder that Stark Enterprises have been so accommodating to him, giving him all the funding he could ever ask for.
He graduated MIT at 17, lost his mother and father at 19 in a car crash that he relives in nightmares, and temporarily lost his will to live soon after that. Tony thinks he’s lucky he met Pepper when he was on the brink of turning 22, because at that point the parties he held would drag into the early hours of the morning and there were many days he couldn’t remember, faded to black from alcohol and drugs. If he thinks about it some more, he can see how lucky he is to have Pepper Potts in his life, and when he has those revelations, he will come out of his workshop and drag her out to a nice restaurant to relax.
He has only two regrets in life, the first being that he did not tell his mother enough about how much he loved her; the second is not ever telling his father how much he hated him.
Tony is mostly seen with motor oil and engine grease streaking his face and arms, hands busy tinkering with metal and wires or typing away furiously on a computer in code. The stubble on his face is there is there because Tony thinks it makes him look more refined—but if you ask Pepper, she’ll say it’s because he so often forgets to sleep and shave that life is just easier with it on. He smiles, constantly, flashing his white teeth in easy grins, but it is for very few people that his eyes smile, too.
To say that Tony Stark is happiest when he is building something is not untrue. There is something about the whirr of an engine and the feeling you get when all those wires connect and it just works. It’s almost like sex, all the time and effort leading to that single climatic moment where there is an empty space of finding out will it work? and then the moment of success or failure. Creating things prevents him from causing destruction (most of the time). There is nothing to prove to technology, and if anything he builds breaks, he can build it again and again and again.
However, in truth, Tony is happiest when he is logged in as iamironman (on LJ and Ao3, and known as tinman elsewhere). There, people don’t see all the drinking problems or the baggage, only pixels on a screen. Tony Stark doesn’t quite enjoy being Tony Stark most days, but being iamironman allows him to escape that, if only for a while.
==
@tinman: I really should know better than doing a BB and #NaNoWriMo at the same time. #damnit
@rescue_hera: @tinman: Don’t worry. As your beta, I’ll keep you on schedule.
@tinman: @rescue_hera: My fandom time has a SCHEDULE now?!
@rescue_hera: @tinman: What makes you think this is only a recent occurrence? I’ve even colour coded it, look: twitpic.com/1z3y...
@tinman: @rescue_hera: What would I do without you? xoxo
@rescue_hera: @tinman: You’re late for your 11 o’clock.
@tinman: @rescue_hera: <3 You complete me.
@rescue_hera: @tinman: You’re lucky I don’t sue for harassment some days.
==
friendly neighbourhood stalker (spideysenses) wrote in fandom_wank,
Are we even surprised anymore, seriously?
GUYS, YOU HAVE TO STOP FEEDING THE TROLL. IT THRIVES ON HUMAN MISERY. C’MON, Y’ALL SHOULD KNOW BETTER. *sigh*
This yet is another update on the wank chronicles of silvertongue (nearly as popular as his Cradlerobbing Chronicles, though this collection of wankfests have been going on for longer and has several more parts to the tale). Popular semi-BNF artist, hacker, general troll, etc.—the full intro/biography here, the historical recap here.
Barely finished rolling in the success of his last multifandom racism wank (yes, the one that somehow included discussion surrounding blue aliens from outer space, thank you very much those few passionate Megamind and Avatar fans for dragging that one on for as long as it went), silvertongue has possibly outdone himself with one of the most elaborate trans*wank seen since the last Harry Potter movie came out.
It has long been known that silvertongue can and will hack user accounts. However, he has not demonstrated this skill to do anything other than delete posts, lock out the original owner, and just be a general nuisance. However, it seems that he grew bored and staged an elaborate takeover of all of lady_s’ accounts, (LiveJournal, Archive of Our Own, DeviantArt, DreamWidth, Tumblr, Fanfiction.net, Twitter).
From there, silvertongue proceeded to send several select PMs to various BNFs across the fandom platforms detailing how lady_s was really one of silvertongue’s sockpuppet accounts for when he wanted to “play female”. This led to great confusion and anger; yet just as the outrage was teetering out, the real lady_s entered the fray, absolutely enraged by the violation.
silvertongue did not even bother to deny his actions, his only explanation, “Oh, it was all just a little bit of harmless fun.” He did not forfeit control of several of lady_s’ accounts, leading to the perpetuation of two extra rumours and the reinforcement of the original lie.
People were confused. Scathing accusations were made. Insults were thrown. A .gif party was held. Then silvertongue uttered the word “transphobia” to someone and shit hit the fan. Some parts of the main thread are still arguing now, here, here and here.
(879 comments) – (Post a new comment)
==
俺は王子だしい~♪ (technophile) wrote in fandomsecrets,
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
1. 
(More!)
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 08 pages, 200 secrets from Secret Submission Post #316.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - omgiknowthem ], [ 1 2 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
(1049 comments) – (Post a new comment)
==
little guy from brooklyn (cap_usa) wrote,
No matter when you go online, there’s always wank. Though I’ll admit this is a level above par to what I’m used to. I think I wasted a good afternoon catching up on all this. I don’t remember this user from before, but I have to admit his current hold on fandom is impressive. The troll even has fangirls.
Anyway, I’ve signed up for the Big Bang on shield_hq. I haven’t participated in one of these in a long time, I can’t wait to corroborate with an author! Sounds like good fun. All these fanwork fests seem to run so much more smoothly these days. I feel old, somehow. ^^;;
(25 comments) – (Post a new comment)
==
With a scary, almost clockwork precision, Tony is woken by Jarvis at five AM, a rough tongue licking the sides of his jaw, catching at the stubble. Something like a snort and a yawn escapes his throat and he rolls over, his arm flinging forward and narrowly missing Jarvis’ tail.
“Why bother fixing the alarm clock,” Tony complains in a drowsy voice, “when you’ll just wake me up?”
Jarvis just meows at him and steps all over his chest. Dummy is still sleeping on his back, purring. Tony absently scratches behind both of their ears as he tries to blink himself awake. The world comes into focus slowly, and he only gets out of bed when the growls of his stomach are louder than Dummy’s purrs.
He feeds his cats first, because otherwise they would just circle his legs until he trips. They’ve long reached an understanding about priorities. Despite trying to put Dummy on a diet, he seems to have grown over the last few weeks. Tony vaguely suspects Jarvis has been sharing his food when he wasn’t directly looking at them.
Tony has considered training his security cameras on his cats, but he figures that’s inching his way into paranoia-fuelled insanity.
The kitchen counter doubles as a large touch screen, which he uses to flick through his emails and morning notices. A new folder marked “HAMMER” has been flagged for him to read, and he skims it quickly. The more he reads, the more his good mood dissipates. Stark Enterprises finds its main competition comes from Hammer Corp., who usually sell knock off, low quality versions of StarkTech; using technology that Tony has spent hundreds of painstaking hours perfecting. Tony has wanted to sue him a few times, but Legal keeps telling him that they change the designs enough to escape patenting laws.
So perhaps Tony has a slightly unhealthy investment in stalking Hammer Corp. and just waiting for them to screw up. Google Alerts is really quite helpful sometimes.
Except this isn’t why Pepper’s sent him the file. Something’s different. Tony’s eyes widen as he keeps reading. This—
The screen flickers in and out suddenly, and Tony looks to see Dummy walking on the countertop. Tony quickly freezes the program before Dummy could do any more damage. A single, baleful meow escapes the cat, and Tony sighs, rubbing his face.
“No more food for you.”
Meow.
“Seriously,” Tony says, “I can’t.”
Meoooow.
“Don’t look at me like that. You know what the vet said.”
Jarvis jumps onto Tony’s lap and rubs against his chest, whiskers brushing against his throat. Looking down, Tony says, “Yeah, yeah, heart meds, I know. My god, it’s like Pepper programmed you to look after me.”
In the end, Tony does feed Dummy again, takes his medication and runs out of the house after realising he is nearly fifteen minutes late. The toast sits cold and uneaten in the toaster, untouched cereal long gone soggy in the milk. Dummy drinks from the bowl (Jarvis never shares his food, but Tony always does accidentally). The countertop screen is paused on a picture of Justin Hammer’s face, smiling under the headline: Arc Reactor Energy – is this the way of the future?
==
He wakes up, panting heavily and feeling far too cold, like ice is floating in the blood under his skin. The feeling isn’t entirely unfamiliar, Loki having been haunted by this same nightmare before. It’s okay though, he’s awake, he got away, his arms are free of blue green black bruises—
“Loki, are you alright?”
Sitting up, Loki almost collides with Bruce Banner, the only other person mad enough to work through the night.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Loki stretches, wincing at the sound of bones popping, and asks, “What time is it?”
“Pushing 3 AM. You want to go home?” Bruce looks concerned. “I can lock up behind you.”
“No, thank you,” Loki says, waving away the offer. “I said I’m fine. I just need to work a little longer on this.”
Bruce gives him a long, hard look, before walking back to his station. The neon lights at his bench makes his skin look a sickly green, but Loki doesn’t fare much better, the computer screen washing him out to be too pale. Loki rubs at his eyes furiously, trying to erase the dregs of sleep. There is coffee on his desk, which he drinks quickly before realising it is stone cold.
Disgusting, he thinks, but drinks anyway, hoping the caffeine could do him some good. One hand types away at his computer screen, pulling up his earlier work for scrutiny. He is working on a program called exe.Bifrost, which he hopes will revolutionise the way information and data is sent over the Internet. So far, all it’s doing is being a pain in the ass in terms of coding. Loki is frustrated beyond belief because he’s meant to be good at coding, but his vision for exe.Bifrost is a little extreme. Even Bruce has commented on the sheer difficulty of making a multi-portal platform to handle multiple users and sites all at once.
His fingers fly across the keyboard like magic, eyes racing to read the data on the screen, the sounds of his typing almost rhythmic and soothing. Everything falls into a sort of muffled stasis, and before he knows it, Loki has completely zoned out of reality and all that exists is the computer screen. He must spend over 80% of his time on the computer, be it for work or fandom. It is little wonder, really, why he has to wear glasses these days. They’re thin, black-rimmed and pinch the bridge of his nose, and make him look like a hipster in the most ridiculous ways.
Still, he knows he isn’t going to give up the computer, even if he keeps this up he’ll go half blind and get arthritis cramps in his fingers. He’s normally good at impulse control these days, but this is one addiction that just slips through the cracks...
“You’re beginning to look like the undead,” someone says, sounding far too amused, and Loki looks up to see Tony looking over his shoulder, double checking the code through tinted sunglasses. Who wears sunglasses inside? Utterly pretentious. It’s funny though, how Tony Stark is probably the only man alive who Loki would allow to read over his coding before he was finished. Perhaps it’s a matter of skill—of Tony being the only one who understands the complexities of what he is doing.
“What are you doing here so early?” Loki asks, and Tony glances at his watch. Its silver, a wide metal band, very shiny, and Loki’s fingers twitch with a once-familiar urge. Some people would call him a kleptomaniac—or a former one, at any rate—but he prefers to think of himself as a collector of beautiful things. Like a bird, almost, but with more restraint.
“It’s eleven in the morning, man,” Tony says, and he smiles with perfect teeth.
“Shit, shit, crap.”
“When’s the last time you went home?”
“Fuck,” Loki says, his stomach rumbling and he wonders how long it has been since he’s eaten. He glances down at his hands, his wrists, and they would look worryingly thin to those who didn’t know him. Loki, the scrawny boy who could never build up much in terms of muscle, ever so weak and sick; always described as skin and bones—
“You don’t remember, do you?” Tony asks without pity, more so states it like a fact. Loki knows why, has seen the man work himself for days on end, driven with the overpowering need to finish an idea. They can sympathise with the other, they can, both mad geniuses in their own right, masters of different fields, but still alight with that same intensity. It’s not madness, not really, just a complete and utter lack of self preservation.
Deflecting the question, Loki counters with a question of his own. “Where’s Bruce?”
“He wasn’t here when I first got to the building,” Tony says, looking around to see that the computer lab is indeed empty.
“Which was?”
“I think around six?”
“Fuck,” and Loki inexplicably thinks of the one family he stayed with for a winter, a strict Catholic mother always slapping his wrist for his dirty language, foul words he’d picked up from her children, funnily enough, but she never saw the tarnish of her own offspring, only that of the outsider. Reddened skin, and he used to cry, what an odd time to recall such a thing, when was the last time he’d even thought of that—
“You really zone out when you code, don’t you?” Tony asks, breaking the spell and Loki is back in the computer lab, the electric lights vividly bright to his eyes and he can, briefly, see the allure of wearing sunglasses indoors. For now, he slides his own glasses up on his head and rubs the bridge of his nose, noticing vaguely how cold his fingers feel to the touch.
“I think I’m going to head home.”
“That’s probably for the best.”
“Wait.” Loki pauses as sudden curiosity works wonders in suppressing the sudden onslaught of fatigue, “What are you doing in IT?”
“Ah, yes,” Tony takes off his sunglasses and Loki notices how tired he looks underneath them. “I need to talk to you, but perhaps this is a conversation better done when you don’t look dead to the world.”
Loki’s hands are shaking and he is feeling rather light-headed. “Point taken,” he admits, grudgingly, “but I still want to know.”
Tony shrugs and says casually, “Remember how I got you to hack Stane that one time?”
“Yeah?” Hacking isn’t as fun as coding, but Loki is good at it. Well, good enough to find out the many secrets Obadiah Stane was keeping and get him sent to jail for aiding terrorists. However, that was years ago, and Tony has made the effort not to mention that event to Loki since. Tony and Stane were friends, or something, Loki thinks vaguely but doesn’t care quite enough to bother asking. If it were pertinent, Tony would have told him.
In a low voice, Tony says, “I need something similar done to Hammer.”
“Justin Hammer?” Loki asks, and Tony nods once, sharply. “Damn, what happened?”
“Hammer’s doing a little more than stealing stuff that’s already hit the markets.” Tony’s expression was beyond livid, beyond anger—it was a simmering burn of white hot fury. “I think he’s actually taken some of my blueprints. That little bastard can make shoddy knock-offs to his heart’s content, but taking the credit crosses the line.”
“Would you like me to leave some viruses in his hard drive? Hammer strikes me as the type to download some weird kinky porn, so it wouldn’t look too suspicious.”
“That’s sweet to offer, but too obvious,” Tony says, a flirty edge back in his voice and a smile on his face again. “I need to keep this quiet.”
Loki straightens up in his seat. “Right, I’ll get to work on it right now—”
“Get the fuck off the computer, Loki,” Tony growls. “Your eyes are red. I will drive you home myself, I swear.”
“Fine, God,” Loki says flippantly, but turns off his computers all the same under Tony’s watchful eyes. Standing, he puts on his coat and hopes the chill leaves his bones quickly. “But sleep is for the weak.”
The pair of them begin walking out of the labs and towards the elevators. Tony comments mildly, “One day you’re going to snap and kill us all, aren’t you?”
Pressing the elevator button, Loki could only shrug and say, “We’ll see.”
==
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