The piece I did for the @legacy-rebelsfanzine ! I've been sitting on this one for a while!! ✨ long enough to see mistakes and things I would change now, but I'm still proud of it!

FitzSimmons in every episode -> 1.08 The Well

FitzSimmons in every episode -> 1.09 Repairs

don't forget to drink water today! or don't! you contrarian little dehydrated creature

The notes are broken. This is what tumblr is all about apparently.

THE NOTES ARE BROKEN!  This has been reblogged so many times, Tumblr just shrugged and said “infinity”

Accidentally unfollowing one of your mutuals is the Tumblr equivalent of stepping on your pet

Wedding Crasher

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​​, @mrsleopoldfitz​​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 31 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Will Daniels, Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Light Angst, Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, This Plot Gets Derailed By Smut, Background Huntingbird Summary: Jemma Simmons has her life turned upside-down when, on the day of her wedding, her best friend confesses his love for her. Making a rash decision to run away with him, can she put her life back in order? Can they put their lives back in order, and get past the pain they’ve caused to find happiness in their own right?

Excerpt from Chapter 15:

It hadn’t taken Fitz long at all to get ready once he was back in his room. He pulled the bed back into some semblance of order on the off chance Jemma would want to sleep there again, then dropped his towel and went digging through his bag to find a pair of boxers. He followed those with a dark pair of jeans and a gray button down, giving himself a good once over in the mirror before deciding it was passable enough for Wellfleet.

Fitz regretted not having any shoes other than trainers or his sandals, but ultimately settled on wearing sandals to dinner.  Hoping he held up to Jemma’s standards, he went out to the living room and made himself comfortable on the sofa, scrolling through his mobile as he looked for places they could eat. He’d narrowed it down to two when he heard Jemma’s door open and looked up. 

His mouth went a little dry as he took her in, his eyes rapidly scanning up and down and his lips pulling into a smile. “Y’ look great,” he told her. “Really great.”

Read the rest on AO3!

I did the meme thing! And specifically chose 5x16 for them because of REASONS.

collection :

archiveofourown.org/collections/Kn…

And a hash tag

#KnotInMyName

Thank you @smugraccoon137 and everyone who got me to 50 reblogs!

Fitzsimmons // Aphrodite & Hephaestus AU

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Comicverse), Marvel 616, Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Tony Stark/Scott Summers/Pepper Potts/Matt Murdock, Tony Stark/Scott Summers, Tony Stark/Pepper Potts, Tony Stark/Matt Murdock, Scott Summers/Matt Murdock, Clint Barton/Sam Wilson, Loki/Bucky Barnes Characters: Tony Stark, Emma Frost, Pepper Potts, Scott Summers, James “Bucky” Barnes, Steve Rogers, Loki (Marvel), Yelena Belova, Scott Lang, Rocket Raccoon, Gamora, Wanda Maximoff, Erik Lehnsherr, Raven | Mystique, Georges Batroc, Clint Barton, Matt Murdock, Justin Hammer, Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Peter Parker, Thor, Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, Wong (Marvel), Charles Xavier, Billy Kaplan, Teddy Altman (Marvel), Lorna Dane, Danger - Character, Pietro Maximoff, Remy LeBeau, Tommy Shepherd, David Alleyne, Jean Grey, Maria Hill Additional Tags: Round Robin, Birthday, Birthday Party, poly ship, Minor Clint Barton/Sam Wilson, minor Loki/Bucky Barnes, Not Jean Grey Friendly, Not Charles Xavier Friendly, Robots, evil robots, Shapeshifting, doom bot, Party Shenanigans, bonkers the cat, POV Shifting, Swearing Series: Part 1 of MRP_RoundRobin_23

Summary: It’s Tony Stark’s birthday and he’s throwing the party of the century where the entire Marvel Universe is invited to attend. This exclusive, once I’m a lifetime event is sure to bring plenty of excitement, mystery, intrigue and new connections at the most exclusive party of the year! So come on in and so join us on this once in a lifetime celebration of Tony Stark’s special day!

They're innocent let them go

Wedding Crasher

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​, @mrsleopoldfitz​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 31 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Will Daniels, Bobbi Morse, Lance Hunter Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Light Angst, Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, This Plot Gets Derailed By Smut, Background Huntingbird Summary: Jemma Simmons has her life turned upside-down when, on the day of her wedding, her best friend confesses his love for her. Making a rash decision to run away with him, can she put her life back in order? Can they put their lives back in order, and get past the pain they’ve caused to find happiness in their own right?

Excerpt from Chapter 14:

Fingers still entwined, Fitz led Jemma through the tiny cabin and into the bathroom, a smile still plastered over his face. Only once they were in the tiny space did he let her go. “Grab the towels?” he said as he reached for the taps and worked on getting the water up to temp. “This should be good to go in a moment.”

Jemma smiled to herself, reaching for the shelf above the toilet to pull down two fluffy towels. Setting them down on the closed toilet lid, she turned back to where Fitz was testing the water temperature with his hand. She took a brief moment to appreciate the view of him fully nude—he really did have a nice arse, it was unfair of him to hide it beneath untucked shirts and cardigans—before she laid a light hand on the back of his shoulder as she stepped up next to him. “Alright?” she asked.

Read the rest on AO3!

No hardcore fandom has ever died so quickly and so completely as Veronica Mars. This is the story of its murder.

They should study Veronica Mars in Hollywood. I'm serious. It's an incredible story of how to go from "loud, passionate fanbase with its own fandom name that campaigns and advocates constantly for it" to "absolutely zero fucking interest" damn near OVERNIGHT with just ONE epically terri-bad decision.

If you weren't there, you don't understand: From 2007 to 2014, the fandom — the "Marshmallows," as they called themselves — were everywhere in the Internet's geek spaces, my friends. They routinely beat the drum about the series' three seasons and its excellence, lamented its cancellation, pushed others to give the show a try, and always - ALWAYS - proudly and loudly called for the series to be revived.

FULL DISCLOSURE/CONFESSION: I've not even watched that much Veronica Mars, frankly... ? Yeah, I'm sorry! it does seem pretty good from like the four-or-five hours I've experienced firsthand. I just never took the time to sit down with it. Regardless, I find fandoms and their dynamics — both how they operate internally and how they display to others externally — deeply fascinating. And I honestly find them easier to study from the outside than the inside. Like, if I'm IN a fandom, I'm more likely to stay in my corner and ignore places that seem negative. But being on the outside lets me just... absorb what's out there, looking into every forum without judgment. It's like studying pop-culture sociology or something? And it helps that I'm very close to some serious(-ly burnt) Marshmallows. It makes it so much easier to find and absorb the gamut of the fandom.

Besides: There is NO fandom story I've ever seen that's anything like what happened to Veronica Mars and the Marshmallows.

(Time to insert a brief explainer for the uninitiated: Veronica Mars was a TV series that aired from 2004-2007 on the now-deceased UPN network wherein Kristen Bell played the titular character, a high school girl whose single dad was a private detective in the fictional community of Neptune, California. She grew up working "unofficially" as his assistant, which meant that she herself was effectively a teenage private detective.

The three core elements of the series were: 1) Veronica investigating each week's big mystery with plenty of quips and snark, 2) Watching Veronica's various relationships develop and shift, with most of the focus given to a) her relationship to her father and b) Her romantic pursuits (which began as the Veronica/Duncan/Logan triangle before eventually becoming focused on the slow-burn, off-on Veronica/Logan love story), and 3) The gradual development of that season's "mytharc" — the overarching BIG MYSTERY that doesn't get resolved or wrapped until the season finale. So it went over the course of two seasons that took place in high school and the third, shorter season that was at the start of Veronica's collegiate career.)

Just how big and how passionate were the Marshmallows? WELL! When series creator Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy) and star Kristen Bell announced the Kickstarter campaign for the Veronica Mars movie in March 2013, it achieved its heretofore-unprecedented goal of TWO MILLION GODDAMN DOLLARS within less than 12 hours. At that time, it was the biggest Kickstarter goal to ever succeed — and certainly the fastest to reach that kind of height. Fans fell OVER themselves to pay out for it. Hell, my own significant other was DEEP in the tank for VM at the time and invested enough to get multiple t-shirts as backer rewards as well as a disk copy of the movie when it eventually came home.

And AFTER the movie hit in 2014? It was thankfully beloved and embraced! The once-teenage characters were adults who were actually out living on their own and working for a living, but the fandom had grown up with them, so it wasn't like they were begging for them to stay young students. They embraced Adult Veronica and her new adventure. The fandom rejoiced loudly and continued to be all over the geek side of the Internet... where they, of course, still wanted more. Sure, there were new novels in the aftermath (which were written by the creator of the series), but most of the Marshmallows were calling for more movies or a streaming revival.

And then, at long last... season four was actually announced. And there was much (premature) rejoicing yet again.

Yes, Veronica Mars returned for a fourth season on Hulu in 2019. It was just eight episodes, and it was heavily centered on one season-long mystery instead of sprinkling that amongst a bunch of smaller ones, but it would still feature the same ol' Veronica. They promised a new, more "adult" mystery/investigation plus a strong focus on Veronica and Logan's love story.

New Hulu purchased the rights to the first three seasons and hyped up its presence on the platform while marketing the return for the new run. The marketing team played up the most popular quips from the show's history plus put out TONS of stuff centered on the Logan/Veronica ship to pump up the fans.

The season was dropped all at once using the classic Netflix "binge" model in July 2019. And then... afterwards?

There was a brief explosion of LOUD RAGE from the Marshmallows at what series creator Rob Thomas had to done to burn and spite the fandom and ruin his own goodwill.

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4: See, at the end of the movie, Veronica and Logan finally entered into a long-term relationship. In season four, they've been dating for years, and Logan proposes marriage. But of course there has to be drama/obstacles: In this case, Veronica isn't sure she's ready to marry... or capable of being in a marriage. Ah, but of course she eventually realizes how much Logan means to her. The two are married, and, in the season finale... Logan is killed by a car bomb in the penultimate scene. The final scene is a flashfoward to a year later, where Veronica leaves Neptune alone.

For most fandoms, that'd be a memorable point of pain. A big ol' speed bump that ultimately throws some people off the bus, leaving only the die-hards. But the fact that fans had been invested in this relationship for literally 15 years and that Hulu (and creator Rob Thomas) had heavily marketed the new season as being a big romantic event for the ship... it was too much. Unlike the aftermath of the Star Wars sequels, there was no lingering group of die-hard fans who were open to whatever was next — at least no significant one. I did some Googling and could only find TWO people who still wanted another season.

Funnily enough? Critics LOVED this. Vanity Fair infamously penned an editorial about how Veronica Mars had "finally grown up" with the finale. (The same editorial also featured the author openly hating on Veronica ever being in a relationship because it causes "arrested development" and declaring that the movie -- which was acclaimed by both critics AND fans alike, I remind you -- was a lame dud. So. The writer must be a reeeaaaal fun person.)

But a series doesn't live based on critical acclaim, as it turns out. The fandom was murdered overnight. "Marshmallows" stopped appearing in geek spaces online entirely. No one expressed interest in seeing the next season or the next movie. The constant flow of fan AMVs on YouTube and fanfics on AO3 dried up to nothing.

Since 2019 ? Nothing. Chirping crickets. An intensely dedicated fandom of 12 years was just... vaporized.

I've never seen anything like it before OR since.

That's why it's so fucking fascinating.

So what went wrong?

Creator Rob Thomas was adamant about two things: ONE, the series was intended to be a noir show, which meant there couldn't be any happiness for its protagonist. And TWO, the death of Logan was necessary to evolve and grow the series.

Thomas thought that having Veronica in a relationship would be holding her back, and that a marriage would absolutely kill the series and leave her stagnant. It never even occurred to him that marriage isn't the end of a character's life and growth. It never occurred to him that plenty of drama can be had AFTER someone is married, or that development/growth could be that the characters mature enough to be capable of maintaining a committed relationship. Thomas' view of his own universe was so myopic that he couldn't conceive of any possible way that Veronica could still be a private detective involved in life-threatening investigations AND be married at the same time. Futhermore, he felt that fans just wanted Veronica to become a pregnant housewife, which is about as far from what Marshmallows were after as you can get without straight-up killing Veronica and/or Logan. He managed to do the only thing wronger than what he wrongly thought was their insistence.

On top of the above, Rob Thomas only viewed "noir" as a vehicle for total fatalism... despite the fact that many of the most famous noir stories are cynical and full of moral ambiguity, but they still feature a positive outcome. The Big Sleep still has the protagonist get the girl. The Set-Up arguably ends with the happiest possible ending in spite of the beating the hero receives.

Perhaps most importantly? Despite Thomas own insistence that Veronica Mars was always "noir," the majority of both TV critics and fans did not think that designation ever truly applied. I suspect that's the reason why Thomas decided to go as dark and fatalistic as possible: He wanted to be noir, and he was being told that he wasn't. So he went so far into noir that he killed his own most popular property.

He was adamant that it was the only way for the series to grow. But as it turns out, it was instead the only way for the series to permanently end. Without that season four finale, a passionate group of fans would still be begging for more. With it? It's over. Nobody fucking cares now.

That's kind of amazing.