Shelves of Aster Chapter 1 (Part 1 of I Never Bloomed 'till I Met You)

It feels surreal posting this now that it's almost been a year since I started writing the first fic for this series. Now here we are, at Steve/Bucky's origin story! It's gonna be much longer than Rose Blue, so it's an unfinished WIP :) I hope to update every now and then, but I'll be hopping between this and my SFS bang fic for a while.

A big shoutout to @appleschloss who is very much as absorbed into Bloom as I am <3

Pairing: Steve/Bucky
Word/Chapter Count: 5,387 (1/?) LONGFIC!
Tags: Modern/Bookstore AU, Dom/Sub, Dom/Top!Steve, Sub/Bottom!Bucky, First Meetings, Meet Cute, Falling in Love, Fluff & Smut (see full list of tags on AO3)

📚 Summary 📚

Steve had just about everything he could want, and he wasn’t even forty yet. A nice penthouse in Brooklyn, heated floors in all bathrooms, and a closet full of tailor-made suits. It was almost complete, but one thing was missing.

A sub, preferably a twink. Maybe a partner as well? He’d also love to have a sugar baby to spoil.

But Steve was too busy with work to jump back into the dating scene, as bringing Tony’s fantasies to life was time consuming. Had it really been a year since he hooked up with someone? It felt longer, considering he’d been active in the lifestyle for over a decade.

Then came an encounter on a late evening, when he ran to the nearest store in need of paint. It was as if his thoughts were heard and the perfect match for him had fallen into his lap. An adorable twenty-something with beautiful blue eyes and short brown hair. Unfortunately they were about to close, so he hadn't had the chance to talk to the cashier beyond exchanging a couple of words.

But what were the odds he was interested in kink too?

Read on AO3

(A reblog is greatly appreciated! <3)

Sebastian Stan as Ben in ’The Apparition’, (2012). Dir.Todd Lincoln.

Sebastian Stan as Ben in ’The Apparition’, (2012). Dir.Todd Lincoln.

tulb

June is for celebration.

But Pride is for life!

 It doesn’t matter the clouds! Open the way for the rainbow! 

“Look at the rainbow, it is made up of different colors, yet they do not split, because they know how beautiful they are when they stick together.” Michael Bassey Johnson

Dont’ Like, Don’t Read

or DL; DR

• You are responsible for curating your own online experience.
• If something upsets you, makes you angry or queasy or triggers you, stop reading/looking at it. Avoid things that might make you feel that way.
• Learn to use the Sort and Filter function on AO3, especially the Exclude tools.
• On social media, block and mute accounts / tags / words when necessary.
• If you hated something, you don’t need to tell that to the creator or start pointing fingers at them publicly.
• The Back button is free. Use it.

Addendum:

Yes, for this to work, creators need to tag their works accordingly, so that people know what sort of content they are about to engage with and can nope out if necessary.

I will probably make another PSA about the importance of proper tagging later.

Ship And Let Ship

or SALS

• You are allowed to ship whatever you want.
• Everyone else is also allowed to ship whatever they want.
• You are entitled to dislike or even hate a ship. If you want to do this online, in public, don’t use the ship tags for hate posts.
• If you see someone posting about a ship they like and you don’t, there is no need for you to start arguing with them in their replies / comments / QRTs / reblogs. Don’t throw your hate in their face.
• Do not harass fan creators or fans for shipping something you disapprove.
• All of this also applies to liking / disliking an individual character.

Addendum:

”I agree with this, except when…”

No, then you are NOT agreeing with this.

Let me make this VERY clear. There are NO exceptions. None.

You don’t EVER harass real people over pixels.

If you disagree with this, kindly block and move on.

Your Kink Is Not My Kink

or YKINMK / YKINMKATO

• The longer version is ”Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That’s Okay”.
• People have different tastes. Not everything is for everybody.
• Even if you don’t like a specific kink, other people are still allowed to use it in their creations.
• You are entitled to dislike kinky content and think that it’s ”weird”.
• Don’t kink shame or judge people based on their kinks.
• This goes both ways: your kink is not someone else’s kink, so don’t push it onto those who are not into it.

Be Kind

or Don’t Be An Asshole

• Focus on the things you like instead of the things you hate.
• Create and unite instead of destroying and dividing.
• Don’t harass real people over fictional things.
• Stop stirring up petty drama just to get some attention on social media.
• Stop trying to ”win”. Fandom is not a competition.
• Remember that your own experiences aren’t universally shared. Your perception of things can differ from someone else’s, but that doesn’t mean either of you is necessarily wrong.

Images I would insist on cutting from a script as “It’s laying it on a bit too thick don’t you think?”

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.

Dear sweet gods above and below and sideways. Where is my Nopetopus?!

Never ever EVER give anybody worldwide rights to anything of yours. EVER. Gaaaaaaahhhh.

(There are also about ten other things wrong with that contract that are BAD EVIL HORRIBLE NOISOME AND VILE. But if I get started enumerating them right now, before I do something about my blood sugar, it'll turn me into a pissed-off person for the rest of the day. Sweet THOTH on his e-bike but these people are fucking shameless.)

(starts rummaging around on the desk for the text of the Excommunication Curse against the Reivers to pronounce it against these schmucks)

...GAAAAAH. :/

This is how you do a meme. I don’t want to tell anyone my name or my bra size or my date of birth on the internet. Why can’t we make memes using useless and non-personal data points?

Blorbo Superhell

… Posts Georg.

Reblog for a larger sample size!!

And put your choice in the tags because I’m curious 👀

Fandom is such a weird place. Like I watched a tv show and thought “wow, these two nerds have a lot of chemistry and I’d like to dedicate a large chunk of my life to thinking about them” so I went in search of other people who also thought these two nerds had a lot of chemistry and then it turned out that a shit ton of people were talking about these two nerds having a lot of chemistry and now it’s 4 years later and we write each other porn on holidays.

They're so confident about the imaginary content-restricting version of libraries that exist in their heads.

No, AO3 does not pocket the donation money. A high amount of traffic (millions) requires servers to keep the site running.

“What about—“

AO3 won’t implement an algorithm either.

can you tell me who I am?

SPN:  Family doesn’t End with Blood !

Also SPN:  Ha ha ha ha just kidding

Not even a wedding picture, the blurry babymaker will forever remain that. Blurry.

In case I haven’t said this enough: yikes.

who the fuck took that picture? I don’t see a selfie stick and Cas wasn’t invited to dinner so…

this is why I say there was no effort to follow through with the narrative message(s). You can’t get kim, briana, felicia, etc. - fine. You can’t show pictures of them in sam’s generic ass picket fence house? bullshit.

This is why I cannot believe the “it’s not the showrunner’s fault, it’s the CW executives’!”. Did the CW executives tell the prop department to print those pictures and hang them on that wall? I’m absolutely sure the CW is responsible for things that AREN’T in the episode, but the things that ARE in the episode? Do we really think that CW executives would go such extreme lengths, to even decide which pictures must be placed on some horrible wallpaper? Since when network executives do this? Did network executives write the episode Lebanon? Network executives write scripts now? There’s a difference between being censored from writing something, and actively writing something else.

Writers of all times, literally everywhere in the world in every epoch, have managed to write around censorship. Like. Giuseppe Verdi wanted to write how Italian people hated Austrian rule, but Austian censorship couldn’t allow it. So he wrote about Jewish people under Babilonian rule. He didn’t write about how great Austrian rule was!