When I was your age

Hello! I have been on tumblr for a while now and I still have no idea what I'm doing. I love Rise of the Guardians, Good Omens, Thunderbolts, cute animals, and funny .gifs. I have a husband, a daughter, and I am older than you think. I also write fanfic! You can find me on AO3 as notastranger.

[bowlingforgerbils]

Hello!

I would like to get in the habit of writing more little minifics and posting them here instead of adding yet another AO3 WIP to the pile. I have a couple ideas already in mind, but if anyone wants to throw me something they'd like to see me write a little thing about, or wants to chat about Cooper and the Void headcanons or whatever, this is a friendly reminder that my askbox is open. <3

[bowlingforgerbils]

Regarding your asks post 🤭

Would you mind sharing 4, 6, 18 with us as well ? 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼

Thank you for the ask! <3

4. How much time I spend editing depends on the story. Sometimes I edit as I go (usually for one-shots), in which case by the time I am done, I only need to do a quick pass for grammar or typos. Otherwise, I spend a LONG time editing, sometimes re-writing entire paragraphs because of how rough the first draft is. (I always end up forgetting how much work this is, too!)

6. I write on my laptop, and usually that is either at the dining room table, or at my desk at my office. My desk is currently a cluttered mess, so I've been at the dining room table more and more. I try to go to the library once a week and write there, too, for when I really want to buckle down and concentrate.

18. I would like to write an a/b/o fic, specifically an omega x omega fic, because I think it would be sweet.

[disterras-sims]

mii!cooper being such a funny lil guy! 😆

sweet boyfriend coop bonus:

[lollypopunicorn14]

Me after one hour of productiv work:

[sugarskies]

Hiiii!!! First thing I love your work a ton and you're one of like three blogs I actually have notifications on for so I can save everything to read later

Something I've seen in other fics/hcs is Bob doing chores around the Watch Tower to keep busy or earn his keep or (other explanation) and I wondered if you had any thoughts/hcs about that?

IMO he could totally use it to spend more time with John. Hey, he needs to learn how to do it right! If he happens to go to the gym every time John does, that's only because the equipment will need cleaning after! No other reason!

hii anon!! thank you so much for your kindness, i am honored to be one of those three 🥹🫶 and yess absolutely! bob's "i did the dishes though" line was the inspiration for my first thunderbolts fic so i have definitely thought about bob and his chores at times throughout the last year 💖 idk if this is all of them but here's some off the top of my head tonight:

firstly it always comes up so: i headcanon that the team does not have cleaning staff in their personal areas. around most of the tower? yes. that building is huge. there are absolutely staff cleaning the conference areas and hallways and all that. but they don't go in the team's rooms or their living spaces (like the common area with the tv or the kitchen, etc). the thunderbolts have all spent a huge chunk of their lives living under someone else's control and they just want to have their space to themselves. but that does mean they have to do all the chores themselves, including bob.

there are two reasons why i think bob might take it upon himself to do extra chores. the first one is what we all know: bob wants to help. at the very core of his character is this deep desire to be useful. the sentry would obviously be the most useful but he can't use it without the void which just makes him feel even more useless than he did before he had powers. maybe he even feels like a burden to the team. so he takes it upon himself to do as much around the tower as he can to help out because he doesn't know how else to "pull his weight" when he's not able to participate in the whole saving the world thing that the rest of the team does.

the other reason is that bob does not believe that he's allowed to live in the tower with no strings attached. he spent years of his life couch surfing and he was always expected to contribute somehow. not just rent or cleaning up after himself but acting as a live-in housekeeper or committing petty crimes or sharing his drugs or even providing sex. the big thing is that the expectations were rarely clear. bob got kicked out without warning multiple times. so now that he has such an amazing life in the tower and all the food and healthcare he's always needed, he's desperate to keep it. he's doing everything he can to be useful so the team will allow him to stay. nobody knows about either of bob's reasons. if they did, they'd reassure him in a heartbeat that they would never make him leave. whether or not he'd believe them is another question entirely.

part of why bob does so many chores is also because he's just bored. there's not a whole lot to do in the tower and his anxiety makes it hard to leave for long on his own (i headcanon that the drugs he was using gave him a lot of confidence so once he's off them, he has a whole new learning curve of what his real baseline anxiety is and how to cope with that). he likes to read and do art and play games but he can only do so much at a time before he wants to stand up and do something. chores give him something to do and they make him feel useful. a win-win. plus he can listen to audiobooks while he does them which makes it way more fun.

bob usually picks up the chores that are the hardest to get wrong. he'll often do the dishes because 70% go in the dishwasher and the rest just need a scrub. he'll vacuum and sweep and mop the common areas. he does the general household laundry like blankets and hand towels. grocery shopping isn't really necessary because they get most things delivered but bob will often do that anyway because the little walk to the store is good for his agoraphobia and it makes him feel nice when he surprises the team with treats.

there are a few chores bob will not touch. he tried dusting exactly once but his tremors caused him to shatter a vase which triggered a panic attack because of trauma from his dad so now he won't dust anymore. he also tried to learn how to cook while the team was away but it turns out he only knows how to make struggle meals and one mocking comment from john made him give up learning. his ability to take out the trash/recycling also fluctuates because a combination of ocd and trauma from being unhoused has led to him dealing with hoarding that he's too embarrassed to talk to anyone about. cleaning out the fridge/pantry is pretty much impossible for him as someone who spent so much of his life living food insecure.

all that said, bob does struggle hard with depression and executive dysfunction. most of the time, he's able to go around completing his chores like usual. but there are times when he falls into a low and can't motivate himself to make his bed let alone clean the kitchen. during these times, he generally expects to be kicked out. for some reason the team chooses to support him instead. sometimes the guilt of not doing enough comes back in a manic episode where he will spend three days not sleeping doing literally everything.

moving on to the sentryagent fun! the two people on the team who actually like cooking are alexei and john. but alexei's cooking tends to be done 90% in the microwave so everyone prefers john's. sometimes when bob goes into the kitchen, he finds john cooking. he'll often sit down and just watch. bob convinces himself it's because he's trying to learn how to cook so he can meal prep for the team (and because he likes tasting john's food along the way). it takes him a while to admit to himself that he's learning nothing because he's too busy watching john's sexy biceps flex when he dabs the sweat off his forehead; too busy staring at his tongue when it darts out to taste a little sauce on a spoon.

on a similar topic, the gym suggestion? ohh yes. john goes to the training room to do some sets and bob follows him within a few minutes because he's suddenly remembered the mirrors need to be cleaned. please ignore it if he keeps stopping and staring at john in them while he's working. he also takes care of the sweaty towels while he's in there and may or may not hand john two or three just to keep brushing up against his sweaty arm. he always wipes down the equipment while john is in the locker room (even though john insists he can do it himself). if he's licked the bench once or twice while he's doing it well that's nobody's business but his kinky ass.

there are quite a few flowers around the tower that bob tries to care for while the team is away. what makes it hard is that some of them clearly need special treatment and nobody will take ownership of them to tell him what they are. bob has asked the entire team and they all insist they aren't theirs. he finds his answer when he wakes from a nightmare around five one morning and goes to get a drink. to his shock, there's john of all people, watering the flowers before his morning run. bob expects john to deny everything when he speaks up but john ends up rambling at him instead. he tells bob all about how from twelve to eighteen he spent his summers working in hoskins family flowers; how during the school year he'd spend hours studying in the back room with lemar. when bob asks, he shares every detail of what he does to care for the more exotic plants. they don't speak about it again afterward and bob never touches the flowers when john is home. but when he's away, bob takes that chore more seriously than any other.

of all the chores bob helps with, there is one that john has explicitly told him to stop doing. when people track in dirt, blood, etc., bob is not allowed to clean it up. in fact, everyone tries very hard to clean it up before he's able to see it. this is because john once walked in on bob trying to scrub dirty footprints off the floor. his hand was raw and tears were streaming down his face. john tried to ask what was wrong and take the sponge from him so they could talk but bob got even more distressed and insisted it needed to be clean. it took john a while to realize that bob was remembering the feeling of scrubbing his own blood off the floor as a child; of being beat senseless and then forced to wipe away the evidence so his father wouldn't get caught. even when everyone else goes straight to bed after a late mission, john always stops to mop the floors first.

john does tease bob about his poor life skills early on but when he realizes it hurts bob, he stops. he kind of takes it upon himself to help bob learn how to do a lot of things he has less experience with/was never able to learn. everything from how to cook a filling meal to how to properly clean around the base of a toilet. john pretty much always starts these lessons by snapping at bob (e.g. "why the hell are you eating club crackers for dinner come here right tf now i'm teaching you how to make 20 minute chicken noodle soup") but by the end of them, he's completely softened. it makes him unreasonably happy to see bob be so proud of himself over something as simple as unclogging a drain.

[sugarskies]

John

[injuries-in-dust]

An adorable comic I found on reddit and wanted to share.

Original artist Heidi.Doodlez on twitter.

[hound-of-heaven]

Heidi’s also put this and a continuation on WEBTOON!

[injuries-in-dust]

Rebloging to spread that webtoon link.

[bowlingforgerbils]

Ooohh- I get to back atcha ask!

I would love to know 1, 10 and 16!!

Thank you! <3

I have a few fics that I'm very proud of, but the most recent one is Bury the Hatchet or Bury a Friend. It's a canon divergence of Thunderbolts, and has a more angsty tone than I'm used to writing. It came out pretty much exactly how I imagined it, which made me super happy.

10. Do i outline? Um... not really. Sometimes I will write out major plot points, but that's about it. I don't write a lot of multi-chaptered fics, though, that probably has something to do with it.

16. I make playlists for ships or characters, but not specific fics. Sometimes a song will become the "theme song" for a fic, like Billie Eilish's Bury a Friend for the fic mentioned in #1. The song is then also useful as a fic title! I will say that my Cooper/Void playlist has been super fruitful for plotbunnies. ;)

[danielsarmand]

bob, john and yelena + thinking ava left them to die

THUNDERBOLTS* (2025) dir. Jake Schreier

[loverlupins]

ask me if you want!

[belljarbrews]

I love answering questions, if anybody wants to know!

[little-linling]

Poor John, he doesn't know they already have him in their sights 🥴

[bowlingforgerbils]

[in reference to this] Ask and ye shall receive @lollypopunicorn14:

Something that the Void learned about Cooper fairly quickly was that he liked talking. He asked the Void a lot of questions, and when it did not feel like answering, he filled the silence with his own chatter. Sometimes the Void paid attention, sometimes the Void let the sound wash over it like white noise.

Robert had never talked to the Void, except to tell it to go away. Cooper's eagerness to treat the Void like a person and not like a malignant shadow was amusing.

And... enjoyable.

Which is why Cooper's silence on this particular night spoke volumes.

"Something on your mind?" the Void asked. It had Cooper loosely wrapped in its tentacles while the man scrolled aimlessly on his tablet.

Cooper, predictably, blushed. "No, not really..."

The Void let a tentacle slip under Cooper's hoodie, caressing bare skin. "You are lying to me."

Cooper blushed harder and didn't meet any of the Void's eyes. Shame rolled off him in delicious waves. The Void, already in Cooper's mind, poked about for the source, and found it easily.

"You wish to make love to me like a woman?"

Cooper made a distressed sound and hid his face with the tablet, but the Void was having none of that. It took the device out of his hands, setting it aside with one tentacle while holding up his chin with another. Cooper's forehead was creased with worry, his lower lip trembling. "It was just an idle thought, you don't —“

"Enough of a thought that it's kept you quiet all evening."

Cooper's lashes fluttered as he looked away. So bashful, despite everything the Void had already done to him. "I didn't know of a way to bring it up," he admitted. "I don't want you think I'm ungrateful or... or bored or something... and, you know, the logistics..."

The Void scoffed at the latter concern. "My body is a manifestation of my own will, I can shape it however I please."

"I don't want you to be a woman," Cooper added quietly. "I like you as you, but with... um..."

"Somewhere to stick it in?" Cooper's blush intensified and the Void laughed, releasing his chin to rub the side of his face soothingly. "Your fantasies do not make me think of you as ungrateful or dissatisfied, Cooper. A little pedestrian, perhaps, but that is to be expected of your kind."

Cooper relaxed in the Void's hold, a tentative smile on his face. "So, um... is that a thing we could do? Sometime?"

The tentacles caressing Cooper's skin went still, all its eyes focusing intently on his. "Perhaps. But first I will need you to ask properly."

Cooper's breath quickened, a nervous sort of desire brightening his eyes. "Properly?"

The slash of a mouth on the Void's dark form turned up into a sharp smile. "Beg me."

[ceruleanheaven]

i love being prevd its like getting a good grade in thoughts

[danielsarmand]

⋆˙ john figuring out where bob came from before anyone else does

THUNDERBOLTS* (2025) dir. Jake Schreier

[bowlingforgerbils]

Okay okay. I’m going to ask because Voidfield is not leaving my head.

How are we feeling about Cooper getting this specific urge once in a while that since he is, you know, A Man, he wants to be the one in charge? The one who penetrates.

^^

Yay! 🥳 They are not leaving my head, either!

So, Cooper certainly would like to top now and then, that's what he's used to, after all. I think the Void would oblige. But! It's important to remember that top/bottom is NOT the same as dom/sub. The Void is ALWAYS in charge. Always. (Cooper is fine with this.)

The other issue is logistics, but the Void is a shapeshifter, I'm sure they can work something out. 😊 I think the Void would have a LOT of fun teasing out this request from Cooper, who would be embarrassed to ask, because who asks a cosmic horror if you can top?

[disterras-sims]

a short voidfield dates clip. they have gone to that mii wheel so many times already. definitely their fave date spot. 😆 i love it when they're so giddy that they get the wiggles! 🥺

[wiltking]

if you're writing and find yourself thinking 'this is too weird/gross/offputting/esoteric/ambitious/catered to my specific interests + sure to push away a broader audience' that is the devil speaking and it is a lie. you are already firmly on the right path and you need to double down

[cherrydune]

#happypridemonth to jonathan f. walker! (you know why)