#(yes i’m aware oliver is the youngest brother in the comics)

[frommybedroom]

heartstopper s3 + reductress

[bluboothalassophile]

HfaB Universe Openings

Hello,

It has come to my attention that DC has been slightly disappointing us fans. So I’ve thinking to expand on it to the other super families DC has to offer. But I’ve also realized that this undertaking is a wee bit too big for me to do by myself, so I’m thinking to open the Hopes for a Bastard Universe to a few writers who are interested in this undertaking.

The families I’m offering for adoption are the Supers, Flash, Arrows, and Aquas.

The expansion rules are simple, the goal is to smooth out the inconsistencies of DC, and to create a smooth out the interactions of the characters. 

To join, those interested will direct me and my co-judge, @bookaholicpt, to the samples, and together we will select the writers who are most interested in joining. Feel free to tag or message me so we can go investigate your writing.

Now, the goal is open communication between the writers so, yes, there are some ESTABLISHED points from what I’ve already written for the Hopes for a Bastard Series, Rooftop Dances, Oceans Away, Parent Trap, Run Of Your Life, and Chemistry. But other than what little of the external families has been established free creative licence with the families.

Rules for Once In:

No Killing Characters Without Consulting

No Cheating On Married Characters Without Consulting

All Ships Must Be Consulted On, There Are A Few Endgames Already Set

Characters can have one-sided crushes, at the writers discretions

NO Major Events (death, marriage, cheating, relationships, sex, etc.) Impacting On OTHER Families Without Consulting The Impacted Family

Friendships, Team Ups, and Borrowing of Other Characters Must Be Consulted On.

NO CHARACTER BASHING! None. You can dislike a character, I dislike some, but there will be no character bashing. If there is to be character bashing, then you, as the writer, will have to work on selling this through actions, writing, and not just senseless bashing.

No OCs, unless you bring valid reasons for the OC and the OC is not the main of the story, DC has a plethora of characters at our disposal so please, dig into using those.

Now, the winners of this little competition will be offered a single page, black & white, comic panel by, @chromium7sky, who has kindly offered this.

Now, I have the Bats, and Outlaws obviously, as I work on the Hopes for a Bastard Series and Rooftop Dance Trilogy. So if you wish to use the Bats for the story, you need to speak to me about that, but I know the Bats are friends with other superfamilies so I won’t be hording them; to a degree. Same with the Outlaws.

IF Presented with a GOOD Plot Idea for the Titan Teams, or JL Teams, then we will discuss building on those. But to take a Team, with Cross Over Characters means presenting an ACTUAL Plot for those kinds of stories.

Super Families for Adoption:

Aqua Family:

Family Members: Arthur C., Mera, Orm, Garth, Dolphin, Kaldur’ahm, Tula, Arthur Curry Jr., Koryak, Lorena M.

Arthur and Mera are married, they do have a strong marriage

Garth is the exact same age as Richard ‘Dick’ Grayson, and they are friends

Garth is friends with Dick, Roy, and Wally

Kaldur’ahm is gay or bi, depending on the writer’s preference

Garth can be in a relationship with Tula or Dolphin, or a love triangle if you can pull it off

Koryak was born before Arthur was married to Mera and before Arthur was Aquaman and King of Atlantis

Arthur Joseph Curry is the same age as Damian Wayne

Arrow Family:

Family Members: Oliver Q., Felicity S., Roy H., Emiko Q., Tommy M., J. Digg, Artemis C., Connor H., William C., Walter S., Lian H., Detective Q. Lance, Dinah L., Mia D., Cissy K.

Oliver and Felicity are married with a strong marriage

Laurel and Tommy were engaged

Laurel is dead

Moira is dead

Thea is dead

Dinah L. is Detective Lance’s youngest teenage daughter, half sister of Sara and Laurel

Emiko is bi

Tommy is foster father of Cissy and Mia

Lian’s second dad is Jason T.

Roy’s joked on ‘husband’ is Jason T.

Roy is a recovering addict

Mia does have HIV

Artemis is half Vietnamese and Jade’s younger sister

Artemis is marrying/married to (depending on where in the HfaB timeline) Wally West and mother of Irey W. and Jai W.

Flash Family:

Family Members: Barry A., Iris W., Detective J. West, Wally W., Cecile H., Jenna W., Bart A., Jay G., Joan G., Wallace W., Floyd L., Zoe L., Suchin L., Irey W. (depending on HfaB Time Line), Don W. & Dawn W. (depending on the HfaB Timeline), Caitlin S., Cisco R., Harry W., Jesse Q.

Joe has had two wives, Francine & Cecile

Francine is dead and white with red hair (yes, this change was to accomidate Wally West I’s appearence of being white with red hair)

Wally West I is related Iris through her older half brother Robert [deceased] who was mothered by Francine

Jay and Joan Garrick are from Earth 2, which was destroyed

Barry and Iris are happily married

Harry is from Earth 3

Bart is from the Injustice Future (will elaborate to the person who adopts the Flash family)

Bart does not talk about the future

Bart is gay and aware he only likes guys

Irey is from the future

Caitlin is Killer Frost and a JL doctor with high security clearence

Wallace West II is related to Iris West by her younger brother, Daniel who is on Suicide Squad

Floyd Lawton adopted Wallace and lives in Central City with Wallace, Suchin, and Zoe

Iris had a set of twins first; Don and Dawn (depending on HfaB Timeline

Irey is from the future, she’s live with Wally and has a twin in her time; Jai

Super Family:

Family Members: Martha K., Clark K., Lois L., Jon K., Kara Zor-El, Kon-El, Karen Starr, Christopher Kent, Tanya Spears

Clark Kent and Lois Lane are married happily

Jonathan Kent is dead

Jon is Clark and Lois’ son

Kara is also adopted by Clark and Lois, they’re her guardians, not parents; Kara is still Clark’s very young cousin

Kon is adopted, yes, it’s a conflict in the family

Kon and M’gann are expecting twins (family feelings on that is open for interpretation)

Power Girl, a.k.a. Karen Starr is posing as Kara’s older sister

Karen is a lesbian

Karin is from Earth 2, which is destroyed

Chris Kent was adopted after Raven’s connection to the portals and Phantom Zone went haywire in Holiday Express Shipping

Tanya attends MIT

Characters of undetermined sexual orientation can be up to the writer. If a character is obviously gay, bi, lesbian or asexual then the writer will decide, but share to the rest of the writers, about this decision. Race and religion are not to be toyed with, unless that’s still unknown, but for the most part these are known. Try to stay true to the origins of the character, but alterations can be made but please inform us of these alterations.

The goal of opening the HfaB Universe is to create this to be a smoother world than the DC universe, we’re smoothing it out and fixing it. Because frankly I can’t be the only one tired of this shit. So if you’re interested, tag me, or talk to me and present samples. @bookaholicpt and I will work on deciding the winners of this.

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Witherwing, Lankhmar, Mid-List Collapse

Writers (Less Known Writes): David William Jarrett was the son of Mervyn Spencer Jarrett (1906-1986), a works engineer, and  his wife Olive Elizabeth Jenkins (1907-1997), who were married in the summer of 1940.  He had one older brother. Jarrett’s novel was Witherwing (London: Sphere, 1979: New York: Warner, 1979). It begins as a kind of heroic fantasy novel in which Witherwing, the youngest of six princes of Tum-Barlum (the name clearly modeled on Twm Barlwm, the name of a hill in south Wales, but that has no significance to the story).

      RPG (Walker’s Retreat): With last weekend’s Big Brand marketing event masquerading as a fan convention came the announcement–with no release date–of the fourth installment of its iconic isometric dark fantasy action RPG franchise. You know which one I’m talking about, and it’s not the MMORPG. I thought I’d take the time to give you all some alternatives that you may have overlooked or forgotten about, beside Path of Exile and adaptation of other Big Brand properties. This is not an exhaustive list; most of these will be linked to their Steam entries, but I advise you to look at GOG also if you want DRM-free versions or see if you can buy used physical copies.

  News (Niche Gamer): On October 22nd, the United States House of Representatives voted 410 votes to 6 (16 abstained) in favor of the CASE Act- dubbed the “Anti-Meme law” by its critics. The “Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019” was introduced by Representative Hakeem Jeffries (Democrat, New York) on January 5th, 2019. The bill’s purpose was to help content creators utilize a small claims court for copyright infringement, as the current law means copyright disputes must go through the more expensive federal courts.

    Publishing (Kairos): Where have we seen this blockbuster-chasing mentality before? Oh yeah, in the likewise floundering Hollywood film and AAA video game industries. As Western civilization rapidly burns through the cultural capital inherited from Christendom, expect to see more industries falling into hit-obsessed death spirals. It’s a seductive trap. A company stumbles upon a big hit, scrambles to replicate what is in fact a black swan event, and cannibalizes its own seed corn in the process. It’s an old story.

  Comic Books (Paint Monk’s Library): Since Paint Monk’s Library began covering Marvel’s new Conan the Barbarian comic, I’ve received a slew of emails and private messages, mainly from people agreeing with our reviewers about the direction the House of Ideas has taken with such an iconic property. But for every five or six encouraging emails, I get one message from an angry reader telling me that I’m out of touch and if I don’t like Marvel’s new comics to quit reading and “go back to the nursing home to read Bugs Bunny” (Yes, I really did receive that email last month).

  Writers (PulpFest): Not long after midnight on the morning of November 5, 2019, the pulp community lost one of its cornerstones. Tom Johnson passed away after a long battle with cancer. Tom and his wife of many years, Ginger Johnson, were the longtime editors and publishers of ECHOES, a fanzine about the pulp magazines. For nearly twenty years, Tom and Ginger could be counted on for a new issue of ECHOES every other month.

  Star Wars (Digital Bibliophilia): Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is a story that takes place about a year after the events of Star Wars (or A New Hope if you prefer). It begins with Luke and R2-D2 aboard Luke’s X-Wing fighter, and Leia and C3PO aboard a Y-Wing travelling to the planet Circarpous IV to a meeting with an underground movement that had arisen against the Galactic Empire on that planet. They are to formally offer their promise of support from the Rebellion Alliance and encourage the movement rise against it’s oppressors.

  Art (DMR Books): Howard Pyle has rightly been called “The Father of American Illustration.” Before Pyle there was a virtual nothingness when it came to American art. After, there was—perhaps—a flowering of painterly excellence unparalleled in the entire history of art. In the late 1890s, Pyle established various schools of art in Wilmington, Delaware and beyond.  Pyle’s movement has been called the “Brandywine School” in reference to the river that ran along the banks next to Pyle’s various artistic seminaries.

  Cinema (Jstor): Long before First National Pictures began production on Doyle’s dinosaur story, a young marble cutter named Willis O’Brien was sculpting tiny T-Rex figurines. According to The New York Times, O’Brien began experimenting with animation models during an apparently slow day at work. Inspired by his background in boxing, he molded a mini fighter out of clay. His coworker whipped up another clay champion, and pretty soon the two men were acting out a full boxing match with their primitive action figures. Lo and behold, O’Brien’s next production was a short test film featuring a cave man and a dinosaur (made of modeling clay and wooden joints) shot atop the Bank of Italy Building in San Francisco.

  Author Interview (Pulp Hermit): It’s not easy thinking of Will Murray as a new Pulp Author. William Patrick Murray is an author everyone should be familiar with in the new pulp movement, and definitely known throughout pulp fandom since the 1970s. He should be familiar to everyone in the new pulp community. He is one of the most prolific and knowledgeable people in the field of pulp fiction. The author of well over one hundred books, he has penned 40 Destroyer novels, and two-dozen Doc Savage novels (many based on Lester Dent’s uncompleted stories), plus King Kong, Tarzan, and The Shadow. He has also contributed to the Executioner and Mars Attacks, as well as numerous anthologies.

  Science Fiction (Quillette): But this is not the spirit of our moment. Instead, as speculative fiction becomes more diverse, the sense that it must be corrected grows, and author and art are evaluated together. There is a notable asymmetry in this evaluation. Most fiction readers are women, and many fiction genres are dominated by women. Men who write romance novels or cozy mysteries must write under female pseudonyms, because the audiences for these genres will largely avoid books by men.

Writing (Pulprev): When writing a tactical thriller with heavy action elements, you have to get around to talking about the hardware. Tools drive what the characters can and can’t do, and weapons are a big part of that. Also, guns are cool. When writing guns in fiction, a common approach is to simply drop generic terms like ‘rifle’ or ‘pistol’ and leave it at that. Some slightly more sophisticated writers drop brand and/or gun names: FN SCAR, Beretta M9, Barrett M82. It may well work for them. Most readers just want to get on with the action without being bogged down in too much detail. But I prefer a more sophisticated option.

  Pulp Fiction (Rough Edges): As you know if you’ve read this blog much, H. Bedford-Jones is one of my favorite pulp authors and indeed one of my favorite authors, period. I think he was at his strongest with historical adventure novels, so it’s no surprise that YOUNG KIT CARSON is a top-notch yarn that’s been out of print since 1941, when it appeared in the fiction supplement of a Canadian newspaper. A copy of it was discovered recently, and it’s about to be reprinted by Bold Venture Press.

  Fiction (Tentaculii): I’d never heard of Ivy Frost before, but I like the sound of him. These gun-blazing mystery-science stories all appeared in Clues Detective Stories magazine from 1934-37 (not on Archive.org), so one assumes that Lovecraft was aware of them. One wonders how may ‘little nods to Lovecraft’ Wandrei might have snuck into the stories.

    Fritz Leiber (Goodman Games): You might have heard about our recent DCC Lankhmar release. It’s a wonderfully in-depth take on the classic novels by Fritz Lieber, and licensed by his estate. If you are a fan of those novels, you might have heard of something called Rat-Snake. In the back alleys of the city of Lankhmar, money is won and lost, and lives are sometimes wagered as the ultimate prize, all on the roll of the dice. All part of a game called Rat-Snake.

  Art (DMR Books): Stephen Fabian was selling macabre artworks very early in his career, batting one out of the park with his classic cover for Whispers #2 in 1973. He would go on to do more work for Whispers over the course of that groovy decade, including the first-ever illo for Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks.” Stephen did several evocative paintings for Arkham House during that period, as well as covers for Centaur Press and Donald M. Grant. All in all, the 1970s were a great preview of the glorious horror art Mr. Fabian would produce in the 1980s.

  Gary Gygax (Warp Scream): I had the opportunity to interview Gary a number of years back, when I worked at CGM. I very much enjoyed talking to him, and it was fascinating to hear the history of D&D and gaming in general from his perspective. Like many people here, I’ve been a D&D geek for ages; I thought others might be interested to read what he had to say about the history of it all.

  Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): It is nice when the Fake Gamers out themselves so readily, but this performative virtual signalling is really meant to be part of the gatekeeping campaign to push their enemies–those not of the SJW Death Cult–out of the subculture and hobby, or at least its public-facing elements, so that they can control the narrative surrounding tabletop RPGs. Narrative control then becomes cultural control and feeds into political control.

Sensor Sweep: Witherwing, Lankhmar, Mid-List Collapse published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/