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Public Bookmark 261
Mystery Work
Part of Privated_Fics
Summary
This is part of an ongoing challenge and will be revealed soon!
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
11 Jul 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
Dropped at Ch. 6
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Summary
He had saved her that one night and had sensed an opportunity to end his years of emptiness. It was only when he met her did he begin to realise that he might have something to live for. Godric/OC
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
11 Jul 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
Dropped at Ch. 5
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Tags
Summary
Dante starts noticing something off about you, and it's driving him crazy.
Series
- Part 6 of Dante/Reader
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Drink With Me - Silco's POV by InkAndDagger
Fandoms: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021)
26 Jun 2023
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Summary
The Lanes never yield.
Silco's sunken empire may remain beneath Piltover's heavy shadow —for now— but no one can claim that the Undercity is weak.
There is always strength to be rallied, if you know where to look.
It's something Silco prides himself on - the ability to build something from nothing. To materialise opportunity where others do not see it. To innovate. To flip the gambits on any game to his favour, no matter how dire the match may seem.
And so, he never expected to find himself so distracted by something as trivial as a new, whip-tongued bartender.
Neither did he expect that his intrigue might be reciprocated.
And he certainly never expected to form a bond so deep that it calls into question the fears of his past.
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Snippets of Drink With Me as told from Silco's point of view
Series
- Part 4 of Drink With Me
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Tags
Summary
When an ascended Astarion offers to make you his dark consort, his right hand, his most beloved vampire spawn, you reject the offer. However it appears he was not as willing to give you up as you were first led to believe.
Your heart always belonged to the road, yet each twist and turn always brings you right back to Baldur’s gate. To him.
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Summary
You were eighteen. Then, in the blink of an eye, you're twenty-five, waking up beside a man who calls you his wife, in a life you don’t remember living. His name is Levi Ackerman, and he looks at you like you’re everything.
But just as you start to adjust, time slips again.
You never know when it will happen. Only that when it does, you’ll wake up further into a future you never got to live, married, a mother, a stranger to your own life. And yet… Levi is always there, loving you like he’s done it a thousand times before.
But how many versions of you can he survive?
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
11 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 3
The premise is what got me intrigued, and honestly, ends up being the only interesting thing about this story: an 18-year-old OC wakes up in the body of her 25-year-old future self, next to her husband. Great setup. The problem is that almost nothing she does, questions, or hesitates with feels authentic or realistic given the situation she's in.
The story speeds right past the confusion, doubt, anxiety, and full existential crisis this should realistically cause, and instead immediately dives into Levi and OC reflecting on their relationship and feelings. It very much wants to skip over the messy emotional fallout and instead turn this into a nostalgic, star crossed, cringe love story. And even that is handled in a very generic, fanfiction-y way.
OC has no real internal life or sense of connection beyond her immediate discomfort with the stranger she woke up next to. Her panic is about the unfamiliar person in the room, not the much bigger questions: Where am I? How did I get here? How do I get back? Is this even my timeline? Will my presence change anything? And is Levi even telling the truth? We get zero authentic hesitation from the OC: no panic about whether she can get back, no worry about her family or friends in her original timeline (or the current), no questioning if she’s accidentally creating a paradox by existing here. She just… accepts it. Her only discomfort vanishes the second Levi mentions they’re married. For someone who just time-jumped seven years, she treats this like a minor inconvenience rather than a reality-shattering event. Instead, she instantly lets her guard down. Why do a few personal titbits and shared memories automatically equal trust and comfort? It also doesn’t really make sense that she’d just stay with him instead of gradually building trust and figuring things out more carefully. Levi could be lying. He could be her captor spinning a story. Instead of cautiously verifying anything, she melts into trust because she spilled coffee on his shirt (peak cringe trope) and it sounded like sth. she'd do? OC just “feels a way” about everything, and we’re left absorbing all this info completely unaffected, like reading a Wikipedia summary of their relationship. There’s no emotional texture, just Levi dumping lore and OC nodding along.
The age gap is another thing the story just refuses to engage with. Her mental age now should affect her speech, behaviour, and the dynamic between them, especially since Levi is technically interacting with a teenager -someone with 7 fewer years of emotional development, different values, different maturity. The story completely ignores this. Romancing her without any acknowledgment that he’s essentially courting his wife’s past self. It’s unsettling how quickly the narrative forgets she’s 18 in a 25-year-old’s body, not just “wifey with amnesia.” -but the story completely glosses over how that should shift things. Romanticizing this while ignoring all differences just feels wrong.
Levi himself raises so many dropped threads. He mentions her jumping has happened several times before, and that he stays every time because he's her husband and loves her. But that raises even more questions: how does this affect him and their relationship each time? Does she even remember? What does he actually do with OC when she leaves the body she woke up in? Why doesn’t he seem to have anything prepared, especially if this has happened more than once? Have they ever even tried to figure out what causes it? None of it gets explored. He's just the boring perfect-husband trope: endlessly patient, always respectful of boundaries and safe spaces, and constantly reassuring and comforting OC at every opportunity. In three chapters, he’s got no rough edges, no internal life, no frustration, no conflict, no complexity -just a bland exposition machine designed to make the OC (and by extension, the reader) feel cherished. It’s boring. He’s there to be kind and stable, but not much else.
The story wants the aesthetic of a star crossed love story without doing the work to earn the emotional weight. It skips the messy, interesting parts: doubt, anxiety, the sheer weirdness of the situation, and gives us a sanitized highlight reel instead.
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Tags
Summary
Captain Levi is your lover. But more importantly, he’s your superior, and you’re well prepared to follow him to hell if he needs you to.
And when people start turning into titans, and every bloody death is one step closer to the truth, hell may be exactly where you’re going.
Series
- Part 6 of Superior
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
11 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 2
Chapter 1 teases a much more mature, introspective story than Chapter 2 actually delivers. The biggest issue for me is the inconsistent characterisation of the protagonist. In Chapter 1, she comes across as a seasoned veteran: her “immediate call to action” feels rooted in duty, with her priorities clearly set on protecting her squad and preserving humanity. Even her confrontation with Captain Weilman feels sharp, authoritative, and grounded in the reality of the Titan threat.
But by Chapter 2, that version of her starts to disappear, and she’s replaced by a much more modern, rapid-fire wit archetype. The juvenile humour and obnoxious levity undercut the seriousness of the setting, and honestly make her read way younger than she’s supposed to be. Even though her age isn’t explicitly stated, the fact that she’s apparently closer in age to Levi makes me question what he’s even supposed to see in her, especially when her energy and humour feel more like one of the newer cadets than a hardened lieutenant.
On top of that, the wit itself feels distinctly modern rather than canon-typical. Chapter 1 does a good job balancing internal angst with external military urgency, but Chapter 2 loses that balance and slides into what feels like immature, everyday conversation instead.
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Summary
The first thing you do after finally being cured from the virus is fall asleep in the car.
Your husband, Leon, keeps stealing glances at you while he drives. The streetlights pass slowly over your face and his jacket is draped around your shoulders.
He is glad your still with him.
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Summary
Loving Kakashi is a delicate thing.
Part 1 - Imperfect Promises and Proposals
Part 2 - Dog Days have just begun (Parenthood)
Part 3 - Be honest, be true
Part 4 - Not a big deal (wedding)
Part 5 - Comfort (moving in together)
Part 6 - Growing Pains (raising children)
the parts are not in chronological orderSeries
- Part 8 of Baby Series
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The Gravity of Small Things by DoctorDeath231098
Fandoms: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
30 Jun 2026
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Summary
Ivy was supposed to be good at surviving.
Unfortunately, surviving becomes significantly harder once the Doctor starts paying attention to her properly.
Now they are;
- Sharing beds that are definitely 'just for sleeping'
- Emotionally devastating late night conversations
- An alarming amount of accidental hand holding
- One extremely clingy ancient alien,
- One chaotic gremlin girl who keeps casually saying life-altering things like they are casual observation
- And a TARDIS that is absolutely abusing her matchmaking privileges.Meanwhile Amy and Rory are trapped watching two touch-starved disasters slowly ruin each other emotionally through acts of increasing domestic affection.
Or: The Doctor discovers being cared for is psychologically catastrophic, Ivy discovers staying is worse, and everyone suffers immensely about it.
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
09 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 4
This story uses Amy and Rory like a live studio audience. Instead of trusting the reader to pick up on the chemistry between Ivy and the Doctor, it turns the Ponds into a literal hype squad who narrate it for us.
- Amy physically points and shouts about their "weird married telepathy thing."
- Rory observes they're "flirting through electrical malpractice."
- Amy literally yells, "Oh my god he’s in love with her." It's active manipulation.
The fic doesn't trust you to reach those conclusions on your own, so it forces established, beloved characters to act as a "React" track. It flattens Amy and Rory completely. They've been stripped of their own agency and original personalities. Rory is reduced to a cycle of outrage and despair, sighing and calling the Doctor's behaviour "medically concerning" or "catastrophic." While Amy is used as a translator for the reader, narrating the Doctor's internal state outright: "The Doctor did that sometimes: latched onto people who carried too much." By having her verbalize the subtext, the story removes any interpretive depth.
The dialogue itself falls into a repetitive, predictable formula that I can only describe as "Buffy-speak bullshit." Everyone uses the same staccato rhythm of contradiction-banter that goes nowhere. It's quick-witted on the surface, but when every single interaction follows the "I say X, you say the opposite" format, the wit becomes a predictable mechanic rather than genuine personality. It's what broke my immersion and made it hard to engage with the plot happening in the background.
This "Quirk-speak" also means everyone sounds the same. A thousand-year-old alien and a rough-and-tumble mechanic shouldn't share the same ironic, modern understatements. The tone is performative -more interested in performing a "found family" dynamic than letting characters grow naturally. It turns every scene into a series of Tumblr-style captions rather than a grounded narrative.
And then there's the forced bond between the Doctor and Ivy. Within ten minutes of meeting her in a maintenance vent, he sounds like he's "found a new favourite toy." By Chapter 2, Amy already admits she's "fond of her." - once again uses a beloved canon character to steer the reader into liking the OC, rather than letting us form that opinion naturally. There's no logical friction or scepticism, especially given the concerning distress signals and panic sparks around Ivy's initial appearance. The text keeps insisting Ivy and the Doctor are "the same person," but it's only shown through superficial symmetry.
Lastly, and most infuriatingly, this story relies heavily on physical proximity as a crutch for charm. The connection between the Doctor and Ivy happens at light speed. In the first four chapters alone, the Doctor catches Ivy by the wrist, the elbow, and the waist multiple times. In Chapter 3, she "collided directly into him because apparently gravity had personally declared war on her coordination"-it's a mandatory physical contact beat disguised as relationship development.
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Tags
Summary
You're very good at your job, and even better at keeping your distance from the shadier side of the undercity. Until the most powerful man in the Lanes suddenly needs a favor, and your world gets a lot more complicated.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 57,508
- Chapters:
- 15/15
- Comments:
- 203
- Kudos:
- 1,237
- Bookmarks:
- 221
- Hits:
- 21,066
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
08 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 10
The first chapter of this intrigued me with an older, more experienced OC who is mute yet confident and competent in her own right. However, as the story progresses, her muteness begins to feel less like a character trait and more like a sole gimmick to make her stand out. Her son becomes the default mouthpiece for every conversation; in his absence, dialogue occurs through convenient writing or other characters mysteriously understanding her vague communications. At no point is her language barrier, reliance on a drawing board, or dependence on her son meaningfully challenged -especially given the son's own stated desire for independence by moving out.
This ties into the son's role, which often feels less like a character and more like a story-tag-along. When he isn't translating, he serves as a mouthpiece for reasonable questions that spark the OC's internal conflicts, neatly setting up the next plot beat. Combined with the OC's continuous emphasis on her son Ty's safety and happiness, and Ty's own constant doubt and insistence on staying away from Silco's dealings, this feels like a long, drawn-out setup for his -what I presume- death to be as tragically impactful as possible.
The most jarring element, however, is the relationship between Silco and the OC. The progression from "no more than strangers" to whatever is portrayed by Chapter 10 (where I stopped reading) feels rushed, unrealistic, and borderline comical. Their bond develops too quickly over what seems to be mere sentimentality and shared parental feelings for Jinx, lacking the necessary buildup, chemistry and foundation.
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Tags
Summary
You’re gravely injured during an expedition that goes wrong, and in the confusion you’re abandoned in Titan territory. Everything had been going far too well, so it only makes sense that when you’re reaching record breaking distances beyond Wall Rose that it all goes to shit. Could you blame them really? Leaving you behind? Assessing the sharp point of your femur poking through your thigh you decide, yeah, you could blame them a little. The question now is how you’re going to get back to blame them in person. Or rather, how you’re going to survive long enough to try.
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Sunshine and Warning Signs by midnight_rayne
Fandoms: The Vampire Diaries (TV), The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Originals (TV)
12 Aug 2024
Tags
Summary
Speaking to the dead and being able to relive others’ memories are definitely helpful skills to have, but Celia Evergreen’s true superpower is her unrelenting optimism. Her resilience has paid off now that she is free from her vampire captor and embarking on her second chance at life. But ghosts from her past are not so easy to escape, especially not when her destiny is entwined with a certain original hybrid.
(Book 1 of 3)
Series
- Part 1 of Stars Align
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 54,672
- Chapters:
- 21/21
- Comments:
- 188
- Kudos:
- 626
- Bookmarks:
- 152
- Hits:
- 22,386
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
25 May 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 3
Without meaning to sound harsh, it's simple-minded to the extreme and plagued by the worst tendencies of fanfiction. Everything falls conveniently into place, every connection is perfect, and everyone gets along as quickly and intimately as the plot requires. The story takes everything at face value, offering no complexity, deeper exploration, doubt, or lasting consequences. It simply wants its OC inserted into canon as fast as possible.
First chapter already shows the problems. It feels clunky: how it portrays 5-year-old Celia with the internalized thoughts, maturity, articulation, and coherence of someone far older; bonus: heavy exposition dump from her grandpa. At least it establishes the key points around her powers and relationships.
Chapter 2 raises immediate logistical questions. Elijah frees adult Celia from captivity, shortly after, she and Elena hide from him out of fear. Elena is eventually saved by the Salvators, who track them through the blood. Begs the obvious question: Did Elijah meticulously plan for her to take the ripped-out heart so that on the surface she could take her revenge, while he could actually track her through her blood for the foreseeable future? And if that was the plan, why knowingly let her hide instead of immediately taking Celia with him?
Chapter 3 only multiplies the issues. Celia claims her grandparents’ inheritance (a house that just happens to be in Mystic Falls), then, after spending only one week with Stefan, Damon, and Elena invites these two vampires, essentially still strangers, into her newly established safe space, and jumps at them for help - after three years of captivity! With the group she then jumps to major conclusions based on conveniently specific scraps of information her captor had no reason to share with her in the first place. Out of nowhere she deduces that Elijah is an Original and knows about the daggers that can kill them, despite not knowing Elijah or older vampires beforehand. She casually mentions an acquaintance named Killian who values information trade above all else; whom they plan to meet with for an in-progress trade.
These details create glaring inconsistencies. At the start, Celia claims she has no one and nowhere to go after being freed. So why didn’t she seek temporary refuge with Killian to lose Elijah’s trail and offer up information about Elena’s doppelgänger status in exchange? That should have been an easy deal for someone who trades in information, especially since Elena’s still a stranger at this point. Instead, she stays a week with strangers before returning to her inherited house.
Most frustrating of all is how the story treats Celia’s backstory and trauma. The fic establishes her as someone who never feels welcome wherever she is, has no one left, is genuinely resilient (multiple escape attempts despite punishment), observant enough to gauge how to behave to avoid wrath, knows about vampires, and endured three years of chains, malnourishment, physical abuse, and emotional strain. Yet her captivity is reduced to a mere plot point whose only purpose is to set her in motion alongside the canon timeline. Her suffering, trauma, and experiences are footnotes with no exploration, no lasting impact on her character, and no real consequences for the story. This creates deeply unsatisfying contradictions. Why is she afraid, doubtful, and withdrawn with Elijah but immediately trusts the Salvators enough to follow them home and invite them into her safe space? Why does her captivity leave her with no wariness toward vampires and their abuse of power? For all she knows, the brothers could be just as evil and abusive as her captor, with Elena as another victim. The story never builds a believable, slow acquaintance that respects her experiences or the brothers’ canon personalities. Instead, because canon likes the Salvatores, they are portrayed as the loveable nice guys she instantly gets along with. She has no differentiated way of relating to, or speaking with Damon vs Stefan - they’re both just instantly her friends.This isn't the only fic guilty of these sins, but it’s the latest one I’ve read and thus the target of my disappointment. At its core, it offers a childish, immature, self-important interpretation of canon: an OC who is uniquely special (powers, connections, sometimes lazy familial ties that insert her into everything without effort), who befriends canon characters immediately with no foundation, and who then follows the canon plot to a T: rewriting scenes in new prose while the OC contributes actions and dialogue that ultimately change or influence nothing meaningful. The first three chapters gave me more than enough evidence that the story doesn’t truly care about its OC or giving her an organic, believable place in the world it’s borrowing.
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Tags
Summary
A dagger clattered off the wall next to his head. Link drew his bow and fletched an arrow before the weapon had fallen into the water. He hesitated as his would-be attacker darted back into the mouth of the shrine.
“I’m going to lower my bow," he slowly spoke. "Please, don’t throw anything else at my head.”
The figure didn’t answer, but two hard eyes glinted from the dim light.
With careful movements, Link replaced the arrow in its quiver and hooked his bow behind his back.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” Link showed his gloved hands, proving they were empty. “What’s your name?”
The figure said nothing.
“I understand you’re afraid,” he added softly, “but I’m just here to talk.”
Silence.
“I’m not afraid of you," she rasped. "Go away.”
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The Legend of Us by Viktor_my_love
Fandoms: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Video Game), The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Warriors
22 Jun 2026
Tags
Summary
“And yet… I fell in love with you again. I will in every life, in every universe—I love you.”
He doesn’t remember saying it.
He doesn’t remember her.
When Link awakens in the Shrine of Resurrection, the world greets him as a hero—but he is nothing more than a hollow echo of one. The name, the blade, the destiny… they all belong to someone he cannot recall. Even his own reflection feels like a stranger staring back at him.
But there is something else.
A feeling.
A presence that lingers just beyond his reach—warm, aching, and impossibly familiar. It follows him through quiet forests and ruined fields, curls in his chest when the wind shifts just right, and haunts his dreams with fragments of a voice he cannot place.
He knows, without understanding how, that there was someone.
Someone he loved.
Someone he lost.
(Sequel to The Legend of You, but can be read separately)
Series
- Part 2 of Our Legend (Link x Reader)
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
18 May 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
I’m really enjoying this fic so far, but some recent developments have left me iffy. Not in a “this is bad” way, but in a “this is veering away from what I loved about the earlier chapters” way.
The setup was fantastic. The slow (maybe a tad too slow in places) exploration of Link waking up, piecing himself back together, and figuring out his purpose carried so much weight and maturity. And the buildup to Reader’s awakening was excellent. Watching Link uncover those fragments of his past and feeling that growing desperation for him to finally reach her had me genuinely hyped.
Now that she’s awake, though, the story has slipped into this repetitive loop of melodrama. Reader’s constantly wrestling with “I still love him, but he doesn’t remember me, and I can’t risk overwhelming him, so I’ll withhold everything for his own good.” Meanwhile, Link is stuck thinking, “I keep getting these flashes of something deeper between us, but her signals are so mixed that I’m confused, jealous, and spiralling in my own head.” On top of that, the unnecessary Sidon love-triangle drama just feels forced. Link keeps getting worked up over their dynamic, while Reader downplays his very obvious jealousy and never once sits him down to clear the air.
It especially shows in Chapters 15 and 16. Every serious or high stakes moment gets immediately derailed by over-the-top romantic tension: Link simping hard, dramatic reactions whenever Reader gets hurt, all the physical closeness tropes (falling on each other, pulling one another close, lingering stares, zeroing in on her mouth). It started to feel like the fic forgot the actual stakes - the kingdom is in grave danger with a ticking clock overhead, Zelda is in the villain’s clutches, and Reader and Link are supposed to be gathering allies and tools to save the day. Instead, it all turns into CW-style teen drama: hallways and feelings with swords.
The most frustrating part is that Reader could have fixed a lot of this early on. The second she noticed his feelings and jealousy starting to interfere with their mission, she could’ve pulled him aside, clarified what she could without dumping his fractured memories on him, and set some boundaries. But she doesn’t, so we’re left stuck in this exhausting cycle of miscommunication and manufactured tension.
I’m still enjoying the fic overall, there’s a lot to love here. But the shift from a mature, character-driven story to this will-they-won’t-they soap opera feels really jarring. I’m really hoping the plot circles back to the actual stakes soon, because right now the romance is sabotaging them.
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Tags
Summary
The bra lands near his boot.
Law exhales slowly. “…Put that back on.”
You look at him. “Why?”
His jaw tenses. He still doesn’t look at you. “Because I’m trying to finish this.”
——
Law is trying to work and you’re trying to…get him to work onsomeonesomething else.Series
- Part 6 of Law in Love
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Tags
Summary
"We were fucking set up," he spit.
I retreated from him immediately, unable to calm my tremble. "I knew this was going to happen."
"What?" His brow furrowed.
"One of your people betrayed me once already. That's the real reason I'm here."
Impatient, pained breaths shuddered from his lips. "I need you to tell me the truth, Kendra."
I hesitated. "... I can't."
"Bullshit. I need to know what the hell is going on."
"I can't." I stressed the words this time.
"That's not good enough." The menace in his voice was worse than shouting.
"You're a federal agent. I can't... I don't..." I exhaled, defeated. "There's no way for me to know I can trust you."
Anger molded his features. "I took a fucking bullet for you."
My defenses crumbled. "You didn't know who you were protecting."
His gaze sharpened. "Tell me the truth. Are you dangerous?"
There was no reason for him to trust me. No reason for me to expect him to. But the way he looked at me didn't promise suspicion. It promised something else. Something far more terrifying.
His fingers tightened around his gun.
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The Way Home by AliaraShan
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
16 Jul 2021
Tags
Summary
They'd believed there were only five Super Soldiers hidden at the Siberia facility until Tony Stark came upon a sixth. One not even Zemo or Bucky ever knew about. It's a discovery that forces Tony to use the burner phone and bring Captain America home. A secret that ripples through their already broken family and affects the lives of those most closely involved. Can they forgive and reunite in time to face new threats lurking in the dark?
Disclaimer: 1 - This story takes place post Civil War/pre Infinity War and offers minor alterations to the outcome of Thor: Ragnarok.
2 - This story was created prior to the announcement for the Black Widow movie and the OC Yelena has no connection to Yelena Belova.Story is currently undergoing maintenance for grammar, flow, and minor structure/plot fixes preceding intended updates.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 117,556
- Chapters:
- 48/?
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 312
- Kudos:
- 447
- Bookmarks:
- 110
- Hits:
- 17,341
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
18 Mar 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 14
The central premise is actually strong: “Project Soldat X” reveals that the Winter Soldier unknowingly fathered a daughter during his Hydra years. That secret child becomes the catalyst to drag the post-Civil War Avengers back together, force Tony and Steve into the same room, and explore the generational trauma Hydra inflicted on both Bucky and this new girl. On paper, I like it. A lot.
And for the first stretch, the execution genuinely delivers. The writing is confident and in-voice; every canon character feels spot-on: Quips, inner conflicts, motivations, all of it. The team’s reactions to suddenly having a traumatized super-assassin young woman in the Tower are believable. The culture shock of someone ripped from 2012 into 2017 mirrors Steve’s own experience without feeling derivative. Most importantly, Yelena herself never fully reads like a blank self-insert. She has history, scars, and personality that actually influence her choices. Her ice-based powers are introduced carefully and stay (so far) out of Mary-Sue territory. Up to about chapter 10–11, this was shaping up to be one of the better MCU fics I’ve read.
Then it starts derailing, and fast.
The moment her powers are revealed as ice-based, the Loki romance becomes painfully telegraphed - especially after his earlier “I don’t know what to do with myself on this planet” shtick. I was fine with predictable. I just wanted it to be slow and organic, the same careful pace the story had maintained until then. Instead, they click almost instantly (one tiny hiccup and done), and Loki initiates intimacy shockingly fast. For a character whose trust issues and pride are practically his brand, it’s jarring and completely broke immersion for me. Crumbling my interest alongside it.
Loki’s entire reason for sticking around Earth also feels like the author forcing puzzle pieces together instead of letting the character choose it himself. It’s plot machinery wearing a thin character-motivation mask.
From there the cracks spread everywhere (after ruminating with the 14 chapters I've read for a while):
- Sofya (the Hydra scientist left alone with the Winter Soldier long enough to get pregnant) makes zero sense. No guards? No cameras? Hydra just hands their most valuable asset unsupervised private time with a female scientist for months? No suspicion? Come on.
- Bucky’s recovery from decades of brainwashing is treated like a single throwaway sentence. One chapter he’s barely functional, the next he’s emotionally stable, morally certain, and ready to be Super Dad with zero hesitation, doubt, guilt, or nightmares. It’s rushed to the point of absurdity.
- Hydra hides their most successful congenital super-soldier experiment so deeply even the Winter Soldier never knew… yet leaves the file accessible enough that a post-battle clean up team stumbles over it?
- A traumatized girl from 2012 waltzes past FRIDAY’s security, Steve’s supervision, and Natasha’s paranoia to access Tony’s private files without triggering a single alarm. Tony (Mr. Oversight himself) flip-flops between “portable prison” and “sure, go wander New York” because he’s feeling petty that day?
- SHIELD had clear 2004 footage of a super-powered assassin, but Tony’s world-class facial recognition never flagged her until she helpfully gives a fake name?
- Nobody monitors Loki’s “training sessions” with her. The God of Lies and mind control is left alone in a garage to psychically force a young woman to relive her worst trauma…and when the illusion cracks her ribs and makes her cough blood, the story never explains how an illusion causes specific, localized physical injuries.
- Bruce Banner, of all people, just… shrugs and lets this happen.
By chapter 14 the only POV I still enjoyed was Steve’s. Everyone else had been sanded down to serve the family-reunion/romance checklist. The Bucky-has-a-daughter hook is great. The found-family potential was right there; the OFC was promising; the tone and characterization started strong. But the second the romance and recovery arcs hit the gas to reach their predetermined endpoints, logic, canon consistency, and character integrity all got shoved out of the moving car. What could have been a nuanced, slow exploration of intergenerational trauma turned into wish-fulfilment speed run, and I’m out.
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i'm not made by design. by ichorai
Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
19 May 2025
Tags
Summary
wolves and lions tend not to be friends, much less lovers.
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Tags
Summary
After an injury causes you to lose your spot in the World Figure Skating Championship your last hope falls into the hands of Levi Ackerman, a former Olympic competitor.
Bookmarked by fictionaldistraction
12 Mar 2026
Bookmarker's Tags:
Bookmarker's Notes
The ramblings of a person who should log off
Dropped at Ch. 7
I really enjoyed the core concept of this AU – with Levi as a former competitor turned rehab coach. Fits him nicely. The technical side of both figure skating and physical therapy feels decently researched (at least logical and reasonable to a non-expert), and I appreciate the realistic portrayal of slow, frustrating recovery: starting over at the absolute basics, endless repetitions, constant self-doubt, and having every ounce of lingering cockiness patiently dismantled until the skater accepts the process. I also love the notion of how the Reader gradually shifts away from her competition-obsessed mindset and rediscovers the pure joy of skating through Levi’s influence. Levi himself is the other big highlight. That bittersweet detail: he openly admits he misses competing every single day but insists he can never go back, yet he still orbits the sport as a rehab coach. He encourages everyone else to chase the dream he lost, helps them wrestle the same demons he once faced, stays close to the ice but always at arm’s length. Distant, not gone. It’s a beautifully tragic little box he’s built for himself.
Unfortunately, the longer the fic went on, the more that box started to crack in ways that strained believability for me, and almost all of my issues tie back to pacing and relationship foundation.
- The old coach and previous PT get thrown under the bus just to make Levi shine. We’re told the old coach cared, yet they vanish the moment rehab gets hard. No check-ins, no outreach, nothing. The Reader, who I assume spent years with this coach, built programs together, went through every high and low with, got her to the World Championships, never even thinks to confide in them about the lack of progress under the old PT. The second Levi shows basic professional courtesy - expected when working with injured, anxious patients- the Reader is ready to permanently abandon a "long term" coach for a specialist she mostly just finds insanely attractive. It feels like years of trust are discarded for superficiality.
- The attraction develops way too fast, invents meaning where there is none, and reads as almost entirely physical. It feels unearned and physically premature. Out of left field she begins lusting after Levi during the first session over simple exercises and touches. Every professional touch: essential and commonplace in figure skating, especially from a former pairs dancer taking a hands-on approach to be approachable is immediately translated into romantic attraction. Their training time is portrayed as "growing close," yet the Reader has not moved past shallow physical attraction and base knowledge of his background. She attributes minimal personal titbits as him opening up and allowing her into his space, despite neither of them having established any personal foundation to warrant this shift. I read Levi’s behaviour as professional sympathy and friendly wit meant to maximize patient comfort while maintaining privacy - not as special treatment, yet the narrative (via Erwin) insists she must be extraordinary for him to act this way. His private pain never feels like it belongs in the treatment room, and nothing the Reader does justifies him suddenly dropping those walls.
- The permanent-coach decision makes no sense timeline-wise or professionally. The Reader only floats the idea in the last couple of weeks of rehab, yet Levi apparently stopped taking all other clients months earlier and phased everyone out just for her. Why? Their time was almost up anyway; he could have just gone back to his normal caseload. He risks his entire income and professional routine for someone he barely knows personally, then projects his own trauma onto her in that big emotional outburst (“When I got the call she had already shut herself out…”). At that point they’re still essentially stranger-patient. By chapter 7 every doubt he had in chapter 5 about transitioning to full-time competitive coaching (public exposure, scars, cameras, whether rehab skills even translate) is magically gone. He just… decides he’s ready because feelings ...
- Erwin is repeatedly used as the “Levi NEVER does this for anyone else” mouthpiece, but we’ve never seen them interact enough to buy that history.
In the end, what kept me reading was the ice-skating AU itself and the initial portrayal of Levi as this hyper-competent, quietly traumatized PT who knows exactly how to handle broken athletes. Once the story decided that a handful of rehab sessions & mutual attraction was enough foundation to justify throwing away careers, lifelong coaches, financial stability, and deep-seated trauma on both sides… it lost me. The premise and Levi’s concept were strong; the romance just sprinted miles ahead of where the actual relationship building ever reached.