Some people in fandom desperately need to become obsessed with something SUPER niche and obscure. Something with like 10 active fans at the very most. Something with only 6 fics if you're very lucky, all but one written by the same dedicated fan. Something where when you do find a fan account, it's been innactive for years. Something that's not available on streaming and its only physical release was never released in your country. Let it humble you.
If using a bingo card for the event be sure to let us know which card you're using. All the prompts are the same just in a different order to give more options and chances to get a bingo.
It's 2024. Are you still thinking about movieverse!Cherik? Because I am.
For the past several months, there's only been a very slow trickle of posts/fics in the xmcu cherik tag. Let's try to breathe some life back into this incredible pairing!
With one clear winner of my poll, here's thirty prompts for the thirty days of April. (This is a super chill, laid-back event---do these in any order, interpret them as loosely as you like! Create in any medium! Fic, art, gifs, meta, incoherent screaming about the otp…all winners in my book.)
The only rule here is to cherik too close to the sun. Alright. Here are the prompts.
Mutual Pining
Doesn't really even need elaboration! Write that horrifically slow slow-burn. Gif every time McAvoy made insane fuck me eyes on screen. Make a playlist of songs about impossible love.
2. Alternate Meetings
There are endless quotes about how these two complete each other in a way no one they'd met before or after ever did. How else could they have met?
3. Erik Has A Telepathy Kink
This is basically canon. Let my boy get freaky!
4. Canon Fix-It
All the times Fox fucked it up. There are endless options.
5. Hurt/Comfort
Put them in that Situation. Put them in that Blender. Break them apart and put them back together ❤️🩹
6. Canon Compliant
Draw that missing scene! Gif your favourite cherik moment!
7. Beach Divorce
Make it worse. Make it better. Show it to us exactly how it was. Break it down in a 3,000 word meta. Go wild!
8. Domestics
Sometimes you just want to see them doing normal couple things. Erik put the gun down.
9. Found Family
The real heart of x-men!
10. Time Travel
There are SO many possibilities here. Stick them in a time loop. Give them a chance to change their past.
11. AU
Love a good AU!
12. There Is Only One Bed
Had to get this one in here. What better way to amp up the tension?
13. Genosha
By some miracle, cherik actually did end up together at the end of 2019s trash bag disaster Dark Phoenix. We aren’t making a big enough deal about this.
14. Declaration(s) of Love
Who says it first? How do they say it and when? Have they said it…without saying it?
15. Jealousy
Need I say more.
16. Reunion
These two have absolutely no chill.
17. Soulmates
Classic prompt, had to get this in here too.
18. The DOFP Aircraft
The TENSION here. Break it down for me. How does Charles feel about his injury? How does Erik feel about his injury?
19. Gay Mutant Road Trip
You already know.
20. Body Swap
SO fun when people have superpowers.
21. First Kiss
When? How? Who initiated it?
22. The Mansion
Mansion!content is a genre of its own.
23. Conflicting Ideology
Give me your theses. Who’s right? Can they ever reconcile completely? Write a fic where it drives them apart.
24. Sebastian Shaw
A trope unto himself.
25. Team As Matchmaker
They had to have known something was going on, didn’t they?
26. Cooking
Charles deserves a good meal. Also, imagine Erik using his powers in the kitchen. The sheer domesticity…
27. Hurt No Comfort
Plenty of scope with these two 🥲
28. Growing Old Together
Giving Sirs Ian Mckellan and Patrick Stewart their props as well!
29. Making Up
*pushes chess board across the table* sorry babe
30. Charles Xavier Did More For Mutants Than You'll Ever Know
Rising to each other’s defense. Only I can insult this man.
I will be tracking #revivecherik to reblog stuff! Here’s a fic collection for the same. Let’s get this ball rolling! Please feel free to send me an ask if you’ve got anything to say! And most importantly, let’s all have fun 😁
*I know a few of you preferred something like a gift exchange because of the commitment factor—I’m super down to organise a tiny one for the handful of us! If this promptathon doesn’t flop horribly, we can hopefully do a whole bunch of stuff :)
If you read this post all the way through, please reblog for reach! Thank you! Hoping you participate come April.
Shoutout to @inmymagnetoera for reaching out and helping with this!
i’m thinking about all the friends i haven’t messaged in years i want to let ppl know unless we actively fall out i still consider people my friend even if we havent talked in years. idk if that’s universal
ok i’ve gotten one too many ‘this is why i don’t read sci-fi’ comments so here’s a rec list for the people convinced all science fiction is bad and misogynistic (with something for everyone, hopefully!):
(also, btw, the book links are to the Storygraph, which includes content warnings for each one!)
smth funny and lighthearted about a security robot who’d rather watch TV then do its job? all systems red by martha wells (first novella in the The Murderbot Diaries series, 6 books, ongoing)
a complex, intricate political space opera following a warship AI who’s lost (almost) everything? ancillary justice by ann leckie (first in the Imperial Radch trilogy) (fun fact! bc of space linguistics reasons, all characters in this series are referred to with she/her pronouns, making gender a non-factor - it’s really cool!)
a dark story about travelling between parallel universes and a woman who is dead in almost every single one? the space between worlds by micaiah johnson (standalone) (SO good, i don’t get to recommend it often enough!!!)
a story about grief and letting go, and a unique take on alien invasion? the seep by chana porter (standalone novella)
hey, how abt some dystopian YA, for old times sake? specifically, one with sapphics and sick mechas? try gearbreakers by zoe hana mikuta (first in duology)
or, if you’d prefer something a bit less angsty, YA about a ragtag group of teens and a space heist? the disasters by m. k. england (standalone)
alternate history steampunk that blurs the line btwn science fiction and fantasy? the black god’s drums by p. djeli clark (standalone, novella)
a dark gone girl-esque thriller about clones? the echo wife by sarah gailey (standalone)
poetic sapphic romance and time travel? this is how you lose the time war by max gladstone and amal el-mohtar (standalone)
a hopeful utopian future and a human-robot friendship? a psalm for the wild-built by becky chambers (novella, first out of two) (this author’s got a whole bunch of hopepunk sci-fi novels in general, if that’s smth you’re looking for!)
africanfuturism, coming-of-age, and cool jellyfish aliens? binti by nnedi okorafor (novella, first in trilogy)
spicy lesbian cyborgs? and shall machines surrender my benjanun sriduangkaew (novella, first in the Machine Mandate series, 6 books)
cosmic horror with an autistic scientist, cyborg angels and AI gods? the outside by ada hoffmann (first in trilogy, 2 books are out)
also, if you’re a fan of Janelle Monáe, may i draw your attention to the fact that they’ve recently come out with a Dirty Computer short story collection, each story co-written with a diff writer?
this list is long enough, but have some more authors (who are not cis men) also worth checking out: rivers solomon, yoon ha lee, charlie jane anders, aliette de bodard, xiran jay zhao, mary robinette kowal, corinne duyvis
and finally, not all older/classic scifi is written by crusty old white guys who hate women!!! some iconic authors i’d particularly recommend looking into are ursula k. le guin, octavia e. butler, samuel r. delany and vonda n. mcintyre 🥰
Now seems like the time to tell Tumblr about Humphrey. While not a walrus, Humphrey was a sea elephant who was in love with our neighbour’s cow (as in land cow, goes moo, people drink their milk kind of cow). I’m ambivalent to the fae folk, but walrus also maybe more possible than you may think.
I was once late for school because there was a sea elephant in our driveway. He also ate some of my mum’s favourite flowers (not an ideal food group but he was nothing if not adventurous). Sometimes you could her him bellow for his lady love in the night. She was, by all accounts, utterly unimpressed by him but it did not diminish his ardour. There was a Humphrey phone tree in our village, so if people spotted him they would call Mrs A who would call Mrs B and Mrs C, and so on until everyone knew if Humphrey was in your garden (or on the road, or at the playground trying to get up the slide).
He was so popular that there is a statue of him in the main town.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel 616
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Peter Parker/Johnny Storm
Characters: Johnny Storm, Peter Parker
Additional Tags: Getting Together, Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Underage Drinking, Flashbacks, POV Peter Parker, Statue of Liberty - Freeform, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Sexy Times
Series: Part 10 of Marvel 616 and MCU Ficlets
Summary:
Two times in ten years isn’t exactly an epic love story, but if it is all Peter can get, he’ll take it.
no but how much audacity and sheer entitlement do you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?
“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either
ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.
Caveat your policies and principles, because there’s a mad difference between children’s stories and stories that are harmful across the board.
A lot of writers on ao3 don’t care to tag their stories appropriately, or consider the harm they perpetrate with their stories, or take responsibility for the harm they cause with their stories. It’s one thing to write whatever you want, it’s another to publish it, publicise it, and not take care enough to note if it’s harmful.
Let’s be honest, a lot of supposed “dark fic” is generally just exploitive masturbatory fantasy. It’s often written by ppl who don’t care what bigotry they perpetuate, what harmful tropes they use, any of that, as long as they get their kicks.
You can write what you want, but if you choose to post it publicly, you need to be prepared for an audience that has its own opinions. And the audience might say, “This archive needs a better policy”.
The audience might - but AO3 wasn’t created for the audience. It was created for the authors, so they’d have a place to post their fics that kept getting thrown off of other sites.
You might think those sites were correct and some kinds of content shouldn’t be allowed in public anywhere. In which case, you might want to stay away from AO3, because it was explicitly and directly created to host stuff that was unacceptable elsewhere. That’s its core purpose.
Fics that aren’t tagged according to the archive’s rules can be reported. However, there’s not much tagging that’s actually required: Just the warnings (including the option of “choose not to warn,” meaning “not telling you if any of these things are here”) and a fandom. They can leave off the rating, and it’ll be sorted as if it were explicit.
AO3 was meant to be supportive of both “authors who want to tag major and minor pairings, every notable trope in the story, and several types of relationships” - and authors who tag NOTHING but the fandom and maybe a pairing. The “what tags are required?” debate was not new when AO3 was founded, more than 13 years ago. So they opted for a bare minimum of safety tags, added the option of adding a bunch more, and said “Reader Beware: We don’t require that tagging be complete.”
Bitch, if AO3 was just for authors, it wouldn’t exist, because we all would have gotten off our own dicks years ago and realized we didn’t need public acclaim to enjoy writing.
It wasn’t created “just” for authors. But it was created for authors first, with the for-readers features being most focused on, “hey authors - how do you want your readers to find you?”
There’s a difference between wanting to share writing with a community and “needing public acclaim.”
We knew damn well when we set up AO3’s terms of service, that there would be people who decided, “I am NOT putting my writing on a site that hosts THAT AWFUL STUFF.” (At the time, we kind of assumed “That Awful Stuff” was “Voldemort victorious; Death Eater orgies abound” fics, not “Harry/Draco underage” fics, but we also knew that what’s considered “wrong” changes over time.) (Some of us remember when just saying you read slash could get you kicked out of a fandom’s locked email list.)
We weren’t really expecting demands that AO3 change its policies, because… those weren’t after-the-fact decisions? It wasn’t, “hey, let’s build an archive, and oh, I guess we’ll let the icky smut in too.” It was, “The icky smut keeps getting banned/ deleted/ forbidden/ removed because the mods got into a fight about what to allow…. what can we do about that? How about… an archive?”
Complaints that AO3 allows the stuff that AO3 was created to host will get zero results. No changes in policy; no open consideration; no public discussions.
AO3 is now one of the busiest fanfic sites on the internet, because it turns out, a LOT of people like a no-censorship approach. But if popularity wanes and only the ultra-kink-friendly people are still active… that’s fine. That’s what it’s for. Everyone else has a whole internet that will host their content.
The OTWarchive is also open source. If you want to run and host your own archive with your own special rules go ahead. I can’t find it right now but people have done it and documented the process. There’s nothing stopping the “safe space” people from building their own space.
If you want all the benefits of AO3 and the vast amount of content from its open approach then you have to accept that self same approach.
You know I think a better response to Philistine criticism of art along the lines of "I could do that" would be "How lovely! Please do!" as opposed to the snobbish "but you didn't." because I think a lot of artists who did the kind of work that people object to on the grounds that they could make it themselves were interested in the project of trying to tell other people that what they could produce could have artistic value and interest.
Like part of their goal was to make art something anyone could do, to get people to view themselves as potential artists, able to express themselves in ways that have meaning and value.
New York Minute -- "Reed Richards was frowning at him like he was auditioning for the part of the disapproving dad in every sitcom ever written." MCU-ish, canon divergent after Captain America Civil War, my own imagining of a movie Spider-Man/Fantastic Four. Rated T.
Out of the Thousand Invitations -- "I know what I want for Christmas, Peter thought." and "I'm having a life crisis." 616-ish, although written with the MTV animated Spider-Man series in mind as well. Peter subs in for Mary Jane as a mall Santa. Johnny gets mistaken for Reed's child bride. Rated G.
And We'll Never Be Lonely Anymore -- "Since your -- since I had to drag your sorry ass out of the river!" TASM/Fant4stic. The ring pop married fic. Rated T.
If anyone recognizes the others, please tag the authors. :) The "dozen cell phone videos of you cracking bad jokes at the expense of a furry" line is very familiar to me but a quick flip through some works I thought it might be from turned up nothing.
ETA: the "dozen cell phone videos of you cracking bad jokes" snip is from don't read the comments by hippolytas.
every time theres a new bad tv show or movie people act like its the end of the world you guys need to learn about the not watching shit method i’ve been successfully employing the not watching shit method for years
I unfortunately applied this method to both Warrior Nun and Turn Up For Charlie, only watching either after cancellation and regret doing my minuscule part in said lack of further content.
whats great about the internet is that you can just ignore people who are fucking stupid and not waste your time on them, i say, white knuckling the sink and staring into the mirror
