#but i really like how the lighting turned out :) I've read 50 chapters of this in 2 days. it's becoming a problem

[volfoss]

I ❤️ when women are evil (and when Nobimaru is too ig 🙄)

[quinloki]

What's your writing process like? Do you draft everything at once and then release chapter by chapter as you edit or something similar?

How to you keep your notes organized? I think you've said before in an ask you use Scrivener (me too!), how do you organize that? I love seeing peoples writing processes in general, if your comfortable explaining!!

Okay you're awesome thank you 💛

Process. Ah. Ahem. Organization... /sweats/

Okay, so organization I have something like that. Thanks almost entirely to Scrivener if I'mma be honest. My projects are organized by blorbo - so like all the Kid x Readers are in one project, and then broken down in files by book.

Except for A Light Touch - cause that's in the Grandline AU collection project, and all associated stories are in there with it.

Notes, though, and er... drafts... Ah.

So I would like to note I mean this in the stereotypical pop culture way, and not in the legitimate way, but I'm insane.

I have never known how long a story was going to be until I wrote it, and while I've had a few slapdash outlines for stories, I never manage to stick to them, so I barely even bother writing them out anymore.

Usually the process is something like:

Inspiration -> Idea -> details for Idea -> some notes -> decide certain parameters -> and time allowing either set aside or start writing chapter 1.

Quicksand, for instance, was inspired by a piece of fan art. It was going to be a one-shot. I started world-building and deciding functional parameters and uh... it's 20 chapters if you don't count the alternative story line. The inspired scene doesn't even happen until like chapter 18.

And even within that, I'd meant for Crocodile to be way more terrifyingly yandere to the point that Doflamingo was going to be the GOOD GUY.

That was the plan. That did not happen.

Inversely, I had the first 5 chapters of A Dragon's Clause outlined, and got so into it those 5 chapters were 8 chapters when I ran out of outline. There are, however, THREE different pages of notes for world building, characters and orgs, and important details, that I reference while I write, and I very much expect the story will be near to 50 chapters, if not longer.

Hey Doll has no outline. It's got a page of notes.

The Host Club AU as nothing set in stone except the Club itself and the owners. Yeah I did some headcanoning and world building via asks, but I still don't know what I'm going to keep and what I'm going to cut, and I'm going to start writing chapter one in June XD There is no outline.

Hell, the ending of a Heart of Gold was decided by a scene in A Light Touch, so one of the reasons I'm going to a little slower than usual is because I have to make sure Heart stays on track. (And yes, A Light Touch, Quicksand, Heart of Gold, and Thrice Prophesized all happen in the same AU at the same time - it's not just a backdrop AU for those stories like it is for Some Direction and Hey Doll.)

But yeah, that's uh... that's it. I don't really have much of a process beyond "This is what I want to work on" and then I turn on a appropriately themed playlist, pick some art to have on one monitor and write on the other. And honestly, thank fuck for like @swampstew, @mamaalpha, @standfucker, @lyndsyh24, @writing-yarn-goblin, @kazieai, @anon-germany, @theaceofflamesposts, @zorostittiesz, @leakyweep, @icy-spicy and @thus-spoke-lo and @mewiyev for all being awesome fucking friends.

Between writing sprints, and beta-reading and inspiring with head canons and thots and art and support and the list goes on and on - I just. (and gods that's not even including @friedbluechicken and @cyborg-franky and can you understand how long this list is gonna get?)

I just kind of stumbled into this whole fandom thing. I didn't know wtf I was doing or what, and I swear I tripped into being friends with Lyn and Raven and it's all kind of a blur and from those two to everyone else on that list to many more beyond that and these alarmingly talented people talk to me of all the random ass bastards out there, and folks are sending me asks thinking I'm cool and wanting to know my process and like -

I'm just a stoat in a trench coat man, I don't even know what I'm doing here.

/ahem/ Okay, I got a little off the topic, but I guess I can't really say I have a process, and I don't plan out my stories much at all. But I will have highlights like I want x, y, and q to happen, so how do I do that? And the real relief is being okay when the story goes a different way and I just let it. I wrote Some Direction inside of a month just doing that. The only thing I knew about that story was who the antagonist was going to be ^^;

[kimigia]

my problem with owari no seraph's writing, from someone who's been reading it since 2016

finally decided to revive this blog after it sat untouched for years and collected copius amounts of dust.... just ignore my old posts LMAO

anyways, i have a small list of issues that i think i've already posted about before? but i wanted to compile them all, and add on anything i haven't mentioned before.

*small spoiler warning for recent chapters & light novel*

the countless neglected side plots and characters. i understand that every side story will eventually get its time to shine... but when? i don't think i'd have such a problem with it if the comic updated more often, but i understand that kagami has other scripts to write and it takes yamamoto time to draw the beautiful art. but it's been years since we last saw characters like lacus welt, rene simm, seishiro hiragi, chess belle, makoto narumi and horn skuld. i definintely think it's a huge shame that after being present for like, 50 or so chapters, they just... disappeared. hell, last time yoichi's plan to get revenge on lacus was mentioned was over 5 years ago. again, if the updates were faster i wouldn't have such a problem with it taking so many chapters to finally get to the side storylines. but i just feel like it's been way too long at this point... this has already been stated before, but the lack of mistuba, kimizuki, yoichi, and sometimes shinoa's respective stories being addressed is also really annoying. it feels like they've been completely forgotten and neglected and like the comic is just 'mika & yu + extras''. i want to see yoichi get his revenge on lacus, i want to see ferid's backstory, i want to see mitsuba's relationship with her sister branched out more, i want to see chess and horn and how they're relevant to crowley's story, i want to see where narumi ran off to, i want to see kimizuki's storyline with his sister, and i know these will be addressed eventually, but like... when? to add onto this, i feel like new storylines keep being added on without old ones being addressed. the whole thing with mika turning into a demon, turning into a sword, finding out the first's past, and all of that. but then again, it took us years to finally figure out the first's past, so i trust that these side plots will also eventually get addressed! it's just very messy, and all over the place.

2. the same lines being repeated over and over again. i swear to god every couple of chapters they go through the same dialogue of "we're going to revive everyone and save all of our family members and save the whole world" and i just feel like nothing really happens after that? just from chapters 100-130 it's been mentioned SO many times and i just. if i'm missing something i'd appreciate it if someone could just tell me at this point because i really don't see why the almost exact same dialogue has to be said so often. i am perfectly aware that the whole storyline revives around the importance of companionship, friendship, and love, but it just seems futile for the same exact thing to be stated so often. i think when it's SHOWN rather than just being told is really nice, like how krul and ashera's backstory was played out, or how the love between paimon and bael was shown. we can draw our own conclusions and interpret the story differently based on what we see rather than being spoonfed the same information over and over again. ashera basically cursed his sister because he couldn't fathom living without her, and bael ended his life because he couldn't fathom living without paimon. i think when the love and importance of the character's relationships with each other is shown like this, rather than the same dialogue being restated chapter after chapter, the story flows much smoother.

3. the lack of character development. again, if i've somehow missed it then please just tell me because i can't find it anywhere. specifically in yu's case, because it's been YEARS. i will say, in the early volumes of the manga i definitely saw him undergo a huge change, because before he got put in the demon army he had a very sour attitude and refused to make friends. but after he found his new family, he did a complete 180 and made it his life's mission to live for them and do anything to save them, mika included (later on) but again, that was years ago and since then i've honestly been unable to see much change in his behavior. despite the numerous times guren has shown himself to be a shifty, shady person that's hard to trust, it doesn't go through yu's head. even after they had that huge fight around chapter 112, his anger towards guren wasn't even about the fact that guren planned for his family to be murdered by ferid! he rarely listens to mika, and he generally just goes off and does whatever he likes. i UNDERSTAND that this is just part of his character and personality, but my god is it frustrating to watch... i will say though, him bowing to krul and requesting her help to save mika was a nice surprise that i didn't anticipate. i'd really like to see more of that! more of him listening to other characters who desperately try to help him, etc.

4. the way female characters are written and treated. i understand that this is a shounen manga, but the only female characters in the series being used for fan service gets on my nerves a LOT, especially since they're not really that well written in the first place. also the dialogue and interactions between them... i really really hate that majority of the conversations between just shinoa and mitsuba are played off as boob jokes or something when they could be having legitimate bonding moments and building their friendships. like i'm not gonna lie, shinoa is an absolutely FASCINATING character to me. but i want to see the girls interact with other girls outside of topics that have to do with a man or just making boob jokes!!! (i've only read volume 1 of the catastrophe manga,) but going off of that, the way there could've been so much more attention paid to sayuri's character for example but a lot of the spotlight on her just consisted of either a. her boobs being shown or b. somebody talking about her boobs. i'm not gonna lie, one of the first pages of the manga being a naked 14 year old girl was ....?? anyways. and how could i forget about chess and horn! they're vampires that're hundreds to thousands of years old, and they can't even fall in love or feel romantic desire, but the whole blushing thing while getting down on their knees to suck crowley's blood from his finger? chess getting jealous of horn for being able to suck his blood? hello? like... come on. i will say though, i really like how krul's character is written. in my opinion, she's an example of a well written female character.

an additional note that's not criticism: my opinions on the new art style are kinda 50/50... i feel like for the adult/older characters, the tiny eyes and sharper/more realistic features can make them look kinda weird sometimes, especially their front profiles. but for the younger/child/teen characters, i actually really like it and i feel like it suits them! not having their eyes take up half of their faces anymore looks good, and it can also be interpreted as physical growth.

anyways, there are so so so many things that i legitimately love about owari no seraph, so this isn't me just shitting on the entire series. i'm gonna follow it through to the end, and i'm excited to see how that goes! i just think the writing could use.... some work.

*please excuse any typos*

[why-is-it-always-autumn]

Finished reading Sanderson Secret Project 4! Thoughts below the cut (mostly copied from me messaging my friends on Discord)

the vibes are so scifi. Like it's still Breaths and Shardblades but he's being so science about it

Spren in Stormlight: magical girl fairy companions. Spren in this: AI companion built into your scifi augments

Ooh, Nomad's been to Ashyn? That's the only planet with floating cities near Roshar, iirc

I love that Rosharans always specify shade when they mention eye color. She doesn't just have green eyes she has light green eyes. That adjective is important

Man on the run for his life hasn't slept in a week no way out keeps getting distracted by the urge to do anthropology

Another thing that's very funny is Nomad is talking about how unbelievably low on Investiture he is and it's still, like, unfathomably wealthy by Nalthis standards

Actually I'm gonna look this up. Nomad has 1500 BEUs in chapter one. He had at least 18750 shortly before that.

In Warbreaker, Vasher starts off with around 50 Breaths, which he considers low while acknowledging that many people would not. Most Returned have the equivalent of 2000. This is enough to be worshiped as gods.

Ah okay looking at the coppermind for the Heightenings this makes sense. It's all very consistent

Fifth Heightening: 2000 Breaths: fast healing, high durability, casual magic Ninth Heightening: 20000 Breaths: oh, you know ;) Tenth Heightening: 50000 Breaths: now that's just excessive

Now I will exit the coppermind before I have another "let me just check Rayse's species midway through reading RoW" moment [Fun fact: vital status is listed right next to species!]

I'm sorry did this man break his radiant oaths and then Mayalaran his shardblade back to pseudo life? Is that what's happening here?

Chapter 6 "No. Even in my head I will not admit Rock is right about the airsick lowlander thing"

I thought part of that phrase sounded like Nazh's name!

Gonna be honest, given how very dead He is, I somehow doubt that Adonalsium will remember their plight eventually

Love that "one of them is secretly a dragon" is a legitimate possibility

Huh. I wonder if they're Ghostblood Scadrians, Harmony-sent Scadrians, or just random people

Chapter 9: "Walking into a storm wasn't something usually done on [Roshar]" Unless you're in the middle of dinner and you really need a knife, of course.

I really wonder how confusing it would be to read ssp4 without reading Stormlight Archive

Oh boy. Wit's here!

Like if you only read the secret projects as if they were a standalone series how long would it take to realize that the cabin boy, the coatrack, and the hologram are the same person

"back before God died" You mean before you and your friends killed God? It didn't just happen there was a whole 17 person conspiracy

Hoid has two modes: "I am a silly little man" and "I am older than your planet and I will weep as I allow it to burn". No in between

"Adonalsium will remember our plight eventually" Man who just got off a skype call with one of the people who murdered Adonalsium ten thousand years ago:...

"Can you fly?" "Who told you I used to- oh you mean fly a ship. Yeah probably."

"The Chorus tells of our old world..." "Yes, yes, the forests of Hell, we've all been there"

The implication that there's a thriving interplanetary job market for specifically bronze Mistings...

If there's one thing that I've learned from Homestuck, it's to never turn your back on the body

Every new hint about what went down on Roshar in the back half of Stormlight just increases my fear about what's going to go down in the back half of Stormlight,

"I was destined to unite all of my people" Man who used to work for Dalinar Kholin: l, and I cannot stress this enough, ol

"Your planet shouldn't have different countries. You should have conquered and unified it all" Sir I cannot stress enough how Big Roshar is. They can barely keep the Alethi Princedoms unified there are so many more people on Roshar than here and they are so much more spread out

Now I'm just picturing that Ron Swanson meme. "I laugh at who I want - Wit"

It feels appropriate that this guy's ancestors are from the planet most closely associated with Ambition

It also feels appropriate that Mercy was there, tbh

Love that this guy is not a particularly soldier-y guy by Rosharan standards, but he's got so much soldier energy in comparison to Canticle that no one has yet noticed that he physically can't hurt anyone

Love that they talk about actual rocket science but it's interspersed with phrases like "raw investiture" and "zephyr aether" and "why take all the effort to travel the void of space when you can just walk through another dimension to travel between planets?"

Yes, yes, the plot to kill God, we've all heard of it

Khriss's Second Law :D

I'm really wondering how newbie friendly this book is. Like, they're explaining everything, but they're also throwing a lot of terms around and all of them are things I already know. For me, who read Warbreaker, when he mentions Commands as a thing on Nalthis that's just a refresher. If that's all the context I have...

The fact that this book includes both hoverbikes and a room full of angry ghosts in the same town

Oh that is a very different perspective on the whole lighteyes/darkeyes thing

Ah. Hemolurgy. From Threnodites. He's right, the cosmere is an increasingly small place

Highspren????

What did he even swear to?

I mean "Auxiliary" isn't a very Honorspren name and obviously not all of Bridge Four are Windrunners but Most Of Them Are

262 "You threw out your conscience years ago, I know, though I never had a chance to meet her" Seriously what is going to go down in the back half of Stormlight

Roshar Man: yeah you can totally go into the murder storm my friend Kal does it all the time lmao

They're called Skybreakers because they break you. Storms yeah Bridge Four!

Yessss He did the thing! I was hoping he'd do the salute!

Oh, that's who Zellion is

Hoid, Zahel, etc: I'm changing my name just for fun. Just for the vibes. New planet new me :) Also same planet new me :) Aliases are so fun :) Elegy: I'm literally not the same person anymore but I am keeping the name because it fits me really well. Dead me can change her name idc

Yeah something really bad goes down in the back half of Stormlight. They should not be that surprised to see a Rosharan.

Awakened Steelmind? This tech is so fun

"I like to think that this is all part of God's plan. That He made before He died :)" -- Tootsie Noodles, Starship (2011)

"God had nothing to do with it it was all Auxiliary." "And what's Auxiliary?" [Zellion remembers that spren are fragments of Honor and Cultivation, who are/were themselves Shards of Adonalsium] "..."

"Sigzil was a capable fighter, but far from the Order's best" -- Rhythm of War chapter 6

I'm done btw

Also I didn't talk about her much but I love how down for murder Elegy is. She loves her sister and she's learning all about different kinds of strength but she was so happy when she had that shardblade

Also, speaking of Stormlight, didn't love Nomad mentioning that glowing red eyes remind him of his friends! Hope he just meant Renarin and Rlain but I'm worried he didn't!

In retrospect it makes perfect sense that they already know about the Shattering. They fled Threnody, which is only Like That because of the Odium/Ambition/Mercy fight that killed Uli Da and Splintered Ambition. Those three only existed as Shards because they had already killed Adonalsium.

Also I hadn't realized or had forgotten that Shades are a "being from Threnody" thing, rather than a "dying on Threnody" thing

Fascinating that Auxiliary's corpse can still change forms even when his consciousness is completely gone. That implies that Maya and the others did something on purpose to lock themselves into sword form, rather than it being a direct consequence of the spen dying.

Also don't think I didn't notice Sanderson deliberately dancing around exactly what Sigzil's oaths were. He was Fourth Ideal in two different Orders and everything past Second is personalized

Of course the Scadrians don't interfere except to ruin things. That's so Scadrial

Love Nomad repeatedly going "Okay... I'm Azish, though." Man isn't Thaylen or Alethi it's a completely different culture that happens to share a planet. The Cinder King has no concept of this. The Greater Good doesn't even understand the difference between Roshar and Scadrial

I was laughing at the Cinder King for thinking that you could just conquer all of Roshar (it's so big), and then I remembered the Voidbringer reveal in... I think Words of Radiance? And just started laughing harder. They literally did conquer the entire planet, other than the Shattered Plains and a few other remote areas. That canonically happened

Adonalsium is literally mentioned more in ssp4 than all the other Cosmere books combined lol

[twstunes]

I am OBSESSED with your colored in manga pages!!! They’re beautiful I can’t stop thinking about them, how do you do your TWST page edits??? I’m really wanting to color the chapters too! It looks so fun!

I downloaded the pages (of chp1) straight from where I read them, and edited over (im using krita! Maybe photoshop would be better??) but I can’t seem to make them look the way I want them to. The line quality is nowhere near yours, yours looks so professional! I hope I’m not stepping on your toes by asking but I feel like I’m missing something 😭 would you mind explaining where/how you download the pages with such high quality? Do you turn them transparent like coloring books or edit overtop of them? I hope this ask isn’t too much!!

XOXOXOXO I hope you’re doing well!! You’re easily one of my fav twst blogs!

kicking my feet and giggling,,,,,, I hope you're doing well too!! you're not stepping on my toes at all, don't worry!

The pages I've been using for color edits are from turtlesoupscans' uploads – they're a scanlation group focused on TWST, and currently have stuff up for the manga (both the main story + anthology comic) as well as translations for the official novel. To my understanding, their scans ARE okay to use for color edits, but not for re-translations or mass-reuploads.

I do all my edits in photoshop using a lot of multiply & lighten layers! The coloring book method u mentioned is so enticing yet so traitorous…in photoshop, the selection + erasing method tends to damage the lineart, and the inverted channel method for removing white backgrounds quickly will keep a 'film' if the background isn't pure #ffffff. (Maybe krita has a more effective solution? 👀)

(Also bc I brought up using photoshop I'm ethically obligated to mention that photopea, an online equivalent to photoshop, exists and is free to use)

I've never used krita before, but from what I'm seeing of its layout/capabilities, the process I use should translate over fairly well–

(Added a black bg to the "fill" portion to make it easier to see)

First come the "fill" layers, which are for covering up halftones & similar shading techniques. This step isn't super necessary (and sometimes involves a lot more editing to replicate halftone gradients/patterns), but I heavily recommend it for scenes that involve a lot of dark colors. Leaving halftones in can cause colors to look darker & grayer than they should, the latter of which you specifically want to avoid when making color edits of darker-skinned characters. (They can also be really good for conveying texture tho, which is why I left the statues' shading alone in this example.)

Next are the color layers, where the bulk of the editing happens. As I mentioned above, I use a ton of multiply layers for this so I can just draw over the image. Darken layers also work, but I've found they tend to affect line density & smoothness. The shading and highlighting here is done using masking layers for individual objects/structures – I think quick group + choosing inherit alpha for the mask layer is the krita equivalent? Layers for darkening the overall lighting (like for nighttime scenes) would also go in this section.

Finally, the lighten layers are solely for the lineart. This is to help "soften" the the lineart, so to speak, making the scene feel a little more 3D/fleshed-out. This step is especially important when dealing with hard shadows, like on the Dark Mirror's frame, Pomefiore's windows, and Ignihyde's central pillar-thing. What I do is put down a bunch of lighten layers, typically at 50% or 75% opacity, and color-pick the darkest part of whatever feature I'm editing the lineart for. Because I'm using a darker color, the surrounding multiply layers will usually go unaffected by the lighten layers – if not, I just gotta zoom in and be careful about it. These layers need to be on top of/closer to the 'front' than the color layers, or else the multiply effect of the color layers will apply to the lighten layers as well.

Thanks for bearing with my kinda long-winded explanation! I've been learning as I go, so there might be easier/better ways of doing things that I haven't stumbled across yet.

I hope this helps & that you have fun doing color edits!!

[st-just]

Opinions on the novel and novella categories excluding Elder Race?

Okay so, uh, 3 months late finally answering this (sorry - but I DID read Elder Race in the meantime!)

So, novels-

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine The central metaphor of how an empire can only understand something by consuming/assimilating it into itself was imo well-done, one of the better uses of a hive mind alien I've seen in a while. Mahit and (especially) Three Seagrass continue to be delightful. The whole palace drama plot in the City leaned a biiiiiit too close to 'the Empress is just and good! Sadly scheming ministers and self-interested officials have attempted to mislead her for their own ends' for my tastes, which absolutely made me start rooting for scheming vizer guy out of spite. Still kind of confused what happened to the Judiciary Minister who vanished 2/3 of the way into the first book without comment. Excellent read, would recommend

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers Absolutely my favorite thing Chambers has written, but that is a very low bar. There were a few pages of actual interpersonal conflict that wasn't just a silly misunderstanding! (Even if they had apologized and agreed to disagree by the end of the next chapter). In principle I approve of any sci fi with no human characters in major roles. Aeleon demography continues to give me a headache (how do you spend so much time on worldbuilding and just mess up the basic math?) - though honestly Pei's whole conflict over the societal expectation to have a kid would have had a bit more tension/drama to it in a setting where her species was legitimately endangered and at risk of extinction (the sheer angst potential!) Anyway, yeah, well-executed but Not For Me.

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki I did, uh, not much like this book. In a 'spent a couple hours cathartically ranting about it on discord after finishing it' sort of way. The central romance didn't work, every character arc was perfectly predictable, the whole incessantly hammered home bit about the magic and wonder of home-cooked food just makes me want to gag, I can kind of see what Aoki was going for with the sci fi half of the worldbuilding but it just didn't work at all, and so on. Still not entirely sure what to make of the fact that if you did the 0.5 degree shift necessary to turn the finale into a Christian morality play the quirky alien family plays an identical structural role to where the angels would be. The cursed/demonic-violin repair lady was fun, though.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark This was fun! Nothing hugely ground-breaking and extremely trope-ey, but in a good way? Like the process was clearly 'buddy cop story in into steampunk urban fantasy Cairo' more than anything that evolved naturally out of the characters or setting. But like, eh? The finale involved a giant robot controlled by enslaved ifrit and a mad sorceress trying to restore the British empire attacking the city, nuance and subtlety clearly weren't the goals here. The central mystery was barely a mystery, though. You could pick out the villain by the end of the first act like three or four different ways. Still, yeah, great time. Very pulpy.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir If you don't know that this is by the The Martian guy going in, it will be extremely clear by the time you're 50 pages in. It's a writing style with a real personality bleeding through - if you don't like it, the book will I'm sure be torture. But anyway, I'm a sucker for first contact stories and properly weird but still sympathetic and agentic aliens, and that's the beating heart of the story so I mean, of course I enjoyed it. The science also all seemed plausible/not-obvious-bullshit to me, and Weir did a really good job of getting tension and drama without ever making anyone a villain, with all the threats being faced being natural/environmental. Fun read, assuming very high tolerance for technobabble and also magic amnesia that you don't apply anywhere near the standards of the rest of the books' science to.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan I mean the whole premise of 'mythic/low-fantasy retelling of the founding of the Ming dynasty but with lesbians' feels like what you'd get if you simmered down my reading consumption of the last year or two and poured out the reduction. So like, yeah, of course I liked it! Probably would have been my vote for winner, though not at all sad that Desolation got it instead. As a character type, I really, really love the whole 'arranges everything to work out perfectly through desperate, furious scheming, then absolutely never breaks character and insists it must be providence and they're but a simple monk/scholar/whatever" so Zhu's whole bit there was just catnip to me. The whole melodrama in the mongol court was great, too. And how can you not love a book that ends with the heroine murdering the messiah in cold blood?

novellas-

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire The only other thing I'd read by McGuire before this was Middlegame, which may have given me unrealistic expectations but, like, this was fine? Or, like, I get the sense that this is very much a YA/Middle-grade book, insofar as it really feels like the literary equivalent of a tv special you'd watch with your kid niece and nephew because hey, it's not painful for you or anything? Really funny that this exists entirely independently of the apparently-a-real-thing cartoon Centaurworld, though.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky This was fun classic sci fi. Like, really classic - I kind of thought 'fantasy setting that's secretly a post-apocalyptic sci fi setting where all the 'magic' and 'monsters' are just poorly understood hypertech' went of fashion with the millennium. Anyway I adore things that play with POV and have different people see the same events and process/interpret them radically differently, so the whole book was catnip that way, and it managed to authentically feel like just a small slice of a vaster, weirder universe, and both deuteragonists really work for me. Don't have a solid pick for my preferred winner but this is one of the two I'm torn between.

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard First and so far only thing by de Bodard I've read, which I should probably fix given how big a name she is. Anyway, this was fun! Nothing too groundbreaking, but that is 100% down to my reading habits rather than, like, 'lesbian court drama in a fantasy analogue of an asian country under threat of colonization' is an over-filled niche, or anything (really the only surprising thing was that I hadn't read this already).

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente The other one I might have voted for. On the level of stories she's a bit hit and miss but on the sentence-to-sentence and paragraph-to-paragraph levels Valente is seriously one of my favorite writers working, and this was no exception. Just an absolute delight to read. Also, 'post-apocalyptic magical realism on the city-sized garbage heap floating in the ocean populated by a culture of survivors after the world drowned' is just a great premise. And my shriveled husk of a soul appreciates just committing to the character study and the ruin and the elegy without giving into the urge to make a grand redemptive quest of it all.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers I, uh, liked this significantly less than Galaxy and the Ground Within. Utopias are basically necessarily didactic but, like, you really don't have to lean all the way into literally having the heart of the story be conversations between the protagonist and a sacred and innocent alien whose always correct about everything. Also the whole 'we 100% could be immortal but we chose not to because, like, nature or something. Aren't we so amazing?' thing with the robots is bullshit. Which, combined with the entire aesthetic of the world just left be feeling peevish and asking questions which really weren't the point (Where are the mines? The foundries? You can't make solar panels or modern antibiotics in a basement workshop! And you sure as hell can't cobble together and repair fully mobile and sapient robots in a cave with a box of scraps.)

A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow So it's not that this was bad, exactly. But, like, I feel like it should have come out sometime in the '90s? (Okay without the explicitly gay bits but that's a matter of a few sentences tbh). Like, the deadline for metafictional feminist retellings of classic fairtails being genuinely novel or subversive was sometime before Disney got in on the game, sorry. Also, like, I'm sure it's just down to me being a weird morbid kid, but the whole shocking revelation about how fucked up the original Sleeping Beauty myth is was, like, something I knew before I hit puberty? Only other thing of Harrow's I've read was the Ten Thousand Door's of January and I'm really, really disappointed comparing them, honestly. (Also, as a general rule I dislike anything where it's very clear whether you're supposed to like or trust a character from the scene they're introduced and this is never wrong)

In other categories L’Esprit de L’Escalier should obviously have one novelette, "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" short story, Terra Ignota series, and Monstress comic, based off the foolproof criteria of 'those are the ones I've read'

[jimmycarterghostland]

About my 33 web novel/web serial:

The premise: The Soynites, a human-looking race of aliens, have to get revenge against the Freeman race, which destroyed their home planet, Soy. And the Soynites have to revive it as well.

33 features alien child rulers, deaths, gray morality, alien corpses that turn into smoke, etc.

It's a dark science-fiction novel.

33 is a multiple point of view novel. There are dozens of different narrators so far, I think. I try hard to make the most important of them have distinct character voices.

It's written in third person past tense.

I have an outline for the future chapters of 33. I even know how this novel will end. Now it's just a matter of finishing the rewriting and then completing the novel itself. I definitely don't write fast enough, though. Especially considering this thing has a planned word count of 20 million words.

33 is the first web serial of mine that I've written a full outline for. Before this one, I never planned a novel so deeply.

...

I should make more social media posts about it, but I'm not eager to put 33 on a pedestal. I did that with Redouln Rising, and it ended up flopping so bad. Each time I mention RR, I feel embarrassed.

I can't mention 33 too much, because it's being rewritten and no one can even read it at the moment. The hiatus has to end first. When chapter 75 is out, people will be able to read this web serial. Currently, chapters 1 through 74 are being rewritten. Over 300,000 words of content.

Personally, I feel the novel starts getting really good around chapter 50. And I have great content planned after the unreleased chapter 75. A coronation, for example. And a few important battle scenes that I'm excited to write. Especially a certain one that will take place inside a Freeman space station. I think the reader will love that battle a whole lot. I know I will. That one will be extremely important, for reasons I cannot say.

Presently, 33 isn't a well-known novel, but every popular thing started with a humble beginning. I'm a highly ambitious person writing a highly ambitious work. So it's important that 33 succeeds and becomes loved by many someday. I want it to be noticed. It's why it has a planned word count of 20 million words. One of the reasons why I want to master the writing craft is to make 33 be a literary masterpiece. If it fails, I will try again with a new, similar web serial.

33 is a special number, hence the title.

The cover's main colors are yellow and light blue, because that's the color scheme of the Invincible comic series. It made me realize how great light blue goes with yellow.

It should take me years to finish writing 33. I want it to be something people will be devoted fans of for years, like people tend to do with popular long-running TV shows. I want 33 to be one of the things people look forward to each week.

If I die before I finish it, that will be terrible. I have an ending in mind, and I'm 97% sure I won't change it. There's much I have planned for 33. I know which characters will be killed off by me and which ones won't. There are scenes I desperately want to write, but am unable to because I have to finish the rewrite first.

The rewrite had to happen. The first version of 33 was full of bad writing. One funny but not-so-funny mistake I made was writing with a plot twist in mind, but not realizing that a certain line in the first chapter made that plot twist not be a surprise at all. The mistake came because I hadn't had the twist planned while I was writing the first draft of chapter one. Now it truly is a plot twist. I pray the original readers of 33 don't remember that certain line. The twist hasn't been revealed, not even before the rewrite. I'm desperate to finally reveal it, though. It's one of the reasons why I wish I wasn't writing this rewrite at all. I'm eager to finally reveal the twist.

33 has humor, but I try to keep it to a bare minimum. I'm not fond of the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Joss Whedon style of humor. I see it as excessive. Plus, too much humor will make 33 seem less dark. I'm not writing a comedy. There are some characters who I try to write as funny ones. One of the occasional narrators, Sabrina Sam, isn't one of them, but sometimes I read her dialogue and it amuses me.

Here's some cruel humor: I'm a writer who can't visualize while reading anymore. When I read 33, no images form in my head. The same thing happens when I read other novels. I love reading, but I don't enjoy it as much as I used to.

33 is a Royal Road exclusive, but you don't need an account to read it. You can simply keep tabs on it. Remember, it's written by Damiyon Wood. I typically go by LoneWolfShayu online.

Ultimately, 33 is the novel I would want to read if I were not me. So I'm writing it(and rewriting it too slowly). I want to make a meaningful contribution to the world of literature. That's another reason why I'm writing this thing.

I pray someday 33 will be an amazing piece of literature.

Thank you for believing in me.

Your friend, LoneWolfShayu.

MARCH 15, 2024 UPDATE: 33 won't be 20 million words long. That's too much of an unrealistic, extremely difficult goal. I don't have that much time on my hands. 33 will be 5 million words long instead.

[nrnyx]

WIP whenever

tagged by @raisesomehale ❤️❤️❤️ Hmmm, what to post? I've posted snippets from my Merman AU a few times already, and that's really one of the only ones that I haven't started posting the parts to on AO3, but I might do that soon. I like to start posting once a WIP reaches more than 50 pages (unless it's a one-shot). Readers can read it if they want or wait for it to be complete, but it helps me keep my fics organized, plus I thrive on feedback while I'm writing something, honestly. So there really isn't much I haven't posted except for chapters/parts I'm working on... I DO, however, have another WIP that I've never posted about but that I keep going back to and messing with. It's a Dom/Sub Soulmate AU. Stiles is a gifted pianist who was going to Julliard but had to drop out due to financial reasons and a horrible Dom Professor. He's struggling bad bad to survive in New York (because angst) but keeping it secret from his friends who brag about him being an amazing pianist going to Julliard... but they don't know (of course). Derek is a famous actor who happens to be best friends with Lydia's new soulmate Jordan, and he's the Dom-iest Dom to ever Dom (because that's how I like Derek). Anyway, their worlds collide, and this scene is during their first time meeting.

Before Stiles even realized what he was doing, he'd slapped the waitress's hand away and picked the sugar up himself. The whole table seemed to freeze and Stiles himself froze in shock at his own actions. He sat there not knowing what to do or say, but bristled as the waitress glared at him. 

Unable to take the silent challenge from another Sub, even if it was over a Dom that wasn’t his and he had no claim to, Stiles turned his own sharp glare on her. After holding his gaze for only a few seconds, her cheeks pinked, and her eyes fell away.

“Thank you, you can go,” Stiles heard Derek tell her and felt himself preening in victory at the dismissal, but once the girl was gone, the awkward silence surrounding him returned. Stiles's own eyes fell to the table in embarrassment. 

“Uhh, sorry,” Stiles said, not looking at anyone, although he felt all of their eyes on him. He really had no excuse for the way he'd just acted. Fuck, this was embarrassing. 

Stiles should have listened to his dad and spent some time with Lydia or Scott or checked himself into a Sub center to hang out with a volunteer Dom for a few hours to help quell his urges. Ignoring his biological urges long-term was dangerous, and Stiles had pushed it too far. There was a reason they were supposed to live in pairs, and embarrassing himself in public like this over a Dom that wasn’t family and wasn't his was one of those reasons.

How was Stiles supposed to know he would meet Derek Hale today, though. When Lydia asked him to come to lunch with all of their friends to meet Jordan, he hadn’t expected one of the most famous Dom actors in the world to plop down at their table. Lydia hadn’t been exaggerating when she said Jordan and Derek were best friends if he could just call Derek up for a lunch date to meet their rag-tag crew.

“Two spoons of sugar and only a little cream...” was Derek's only reply to the situation. His soft but steady voice washed over Stiles like a caress, sending a shiver down his spine. Stiles closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, letting the soft instructions soothe his trembling, and the table came back to life around them as Kira started talking. 

Stiles fixed Derek's coffee for him, unable to believe what he'd just done, but as Derek took a sip and hummed his approval, Stiles couldn't stop himself from feeling almost light-headed with satisfaction. He really needed to pull himself together.

TAGGING: @dexterous-sinistrous @greyhavenisback @halinski @kikiroo @sterekbros @rosieposiepuddingnpie @all-or-nothing-baby @isthatbloodonhisshirt & anyone else wanting to play!!! :)

[hollowboobtheory]

Fic ask! 50, 30, 35, 69 (nice), 58

ask game

50 - How would you describe your writing style?

that writing style analyzer thing said i write like chuck palahniuk the fight club guy and i cannot verify that bc i have not read fight club. but i believe it. generally i'd say unhinged. hubris. moody. brooding. chaotic. ironic. i think 2022 was a really big year of artistic growth for me with honing my writing style.

30 - How much do you edit your fics?  Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?

uh yes i edit as i write bc i have no way to guarantee i will remember the editing thought i had later. how much i edit after the fact tends to vary. so far with ggae i'm just shitting it out and then immediately uploading it not even catching my breath first lol. but with TPG i've actually been editing every chapter fairly intensely. like i had that kinda alternating writing two chapters ahead thing going on for awhile just to make my editing better.

35 - What’s your favorite fic you’ve posted?

TPG is my baby. i may have taken a break but she is my main bitch. i literally got the first nine chapters printed into an actual paperback

69(nice) - What are your favorite fics at the moment?

GGG obv has its damn hooks in me. also Summer of 87. is a good fucking romcom

For the Hollywood Dream by @heysatanitsyourgirl has just started but i've got a good feel about it

Against the Kitchen Floor by @honeymuck very chaotic very unhinged i'm laughing again just remembering she really led duncan on huh. let him think she was getting hunted by the mafia or whatever. jfc. there's something deeply wrong with her.

and Wandering Heart by @the-type-a. it's glee.

58 - Do you have a favorite piece of figurative language you’ve written?

YES. first of all there's The Pit. i like it. i'm proud of it. it's an extended metaphor that has more or less evolved into its own character and i love it.

ok but then there's this bit from the phobias chapter in TPG that i'm so damn proud of??

She won another challenge. Nobody was cheering this time. Good. All this meant was they lost another chance to get rid of the beast in their ranks. Gwen turned around and left the dining hall. The villagers cowered away from her as she stumbled outside, forming a wide circle around her. She blinked in the harsh sunlight. She was never meant to walk in the light of day.

and then

The villagers screamed and scrambled away as she blew a stream of acid in front of her, time and time again.

it's like i'm trying to evoke the old silent creature feature gwen likes but casting her in the role of the monster bc that's just how alienated and outcast she feels

i have another one planned for ggae that also is about violent movie history but applied to sex.

oh and then there was in the tri-arm chapter where i just stepped aside and wrote a poem about a circus sideshow???? fucking incredible i am SO in gwen's head.

i also like when i'm saying gwen has butterflies in her stomach but say moths instead bc that's more goth. i think it's cute. OH AND

[unstablerk800]

Conscious

Rating: Mature Relationship: RK800 "Connor" Android(s)/Original Female Character(s) Characters: RK800 "Connor" Android(s) (Detroit: Become Human)Original Female Character(s)Original Male Character(s) Additional Tags: Tagging as I go, I'm really shit at tagging y'all btw, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Violence, Blood and Injury, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Detectives, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Murder, Attempted Murder, Kidnapping Description: Isabella Johnson works in Red Ice Task Force to combat the drug Red Ice in Detroit. While she has various cases going on, she needs fresh eyes for one of them, so she specifically asks her superiors to assign an android to her as a partner. They send an RK800, CyberLife's latest creation. #313 248 317 – 50; Connor. Activated in June 2038. Isabella works well alone, and even better with a partner - even if her partner is an android. She doesn't have any problems with the fact that his blood is blue, and they work on several cases together. Of course, it can't end bad… can it? Chapter 1. 🔽 Chapter 2. Read on Ao3. Word count: 7,052

Additional comments:

...this was the first fanfic I've started to write after I've finished the game for the very first time earlier this year, and since people seem to enjoy my other works by leaving tons of positive feedback, I thought I'd post this one, too. I hope it's okay? 👉🏻👈🏻

"Detective Inspector Isabella Johnson, nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too, Connor."

Isabella smiled up at the android.

She was a white woman, only 5'3", dressed in black jeans, a red shirt and a brown leather jacket over it. She had her badge attached to her belt, her yellowish tiger eyes always curious and alert, her lips full and she pursed them whenever she was thinking about something. Her build was athletic; she had to be in shape when it came to running after culprits, after all. Her shoulder-length hair was pitch black right now, but her original hair colour was brown.

He was 6'00", the light at his temple a pleasant blue while his eyes had the colour of melted chocolate. Despite being an android, he had some sort of warmth to his eyes. They shook hands. He was pleasantly warm, and she liked the smile on his handsome face.

"I'm glad to have you with us."

"I've been informed that you have a difficult case that you need some help with", he continued as they turned to walk down the path towards her station.

"Exactly", she nodded. "We usually like to keep to ourselves, but I need some fresh eyes."

"I hope I can be of help", he sounded enthusiastic, which she liked about him already.

"I hope so, too", she nodded with a smile as they walked to the elevator. She pressed the button and the blasted thing started to come down from 50; stopping at every other floor, as per the usual. Isabella glanced up at Connor, he looked down at her, and she smiled. He was quite... easy on the eyes. "Have you been out in the field?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"How long have you been investigating cases?"

"For a few weeks. I don't remember much of it."

"How come?"

"I got critically damaged, and we couldn't recover most of my memories."

"Oh." She paused. "I'm sorry."

His brows twitched, analyzing her reaction.

"There's nothing to be sorry for, Ma'am."

"Yeah, other humans would say that", she shrugged, glancing back at the elevator. She could sense he was still looking at her. "Personally, I think, losing your memories and having to continue your life sounds quite bad."

"I exist to serve, Ma'am."

She glanced up at him again, and smiled.

"I know."

The elevator arrived, they got inside, and she pressed the correct button. She put her hands behind her back, stretching her spine, closing her eyes at the pleasant sensation of her spine cracking.

Connor let her exit the elevator first, and she led the way down to her office. Everything was pristine clean thanks to the androids who cleaned the area every day after work hours. The sleek white walls with various paintings always made her feel like she was rather at an art exhibition and not a police station. Needless to say, when she worked late and couldn't get her mind to look at things from a different angle, she often walked out here to be alone with her thoughts and a cup of coffee, looking at the paintings while she was thinking.

She had group of six others working with her on several cases; three women, three men. Her training at the academy and talents at blending in, lying, seeing connections where nobody else thought of them made her reliable, and those who worked with her respected her.

Well, most of them.

There had been a few androids who cleaned floors, but they never had one in their team, for the investigations, before. Once they entered their main room on the floor, all eyes were on them. The others were aware they'd get an android, and most of them were neutral about it.

"Guys, this is Connor", she motioned towards the android beside her, "Connor, meet the crew. Alex Wilson, Sera Green, Tiffany Hensley, Charles Page, Troy Jefferson and Nick Juárez."

Each and every one of those who worked with her waved to him, except Juárez who didn't even look up from his screen. 

She looked around to look at the other five members in the room. They were silent, some shook their heads at the lack of Nick's reaction, and she let it go, even if she knew that he thought that an android shouldn't be on their team. She understood his point of view, but she asked for an android from her superiors specifically and Connor was the government's property. She really needed him for a case she had been working on, yes, and his blood was blue indeed; but that didn't mean that she'd let her coworkers be rude to him.

Isabella continued her way towards the desk she worked at. She heard Connor was walking after her. His desk would be right next to hers, and they could share a bigger screen on the right side to her and left side to him respectively. After she showed him his space, he walked to the desk and took a look around.

"Let me show you the case I need your help with", she mumbled, then she touched the wall above their desks and a rectangle of light appeared on it. A glowing map of the city appeared, around it, pictures of the victims and descriptions about them. She sat down. "I've had this for months by now. The last victim was found two weeks ago." Isabella pointed at a picture of a woman. "Every person here disappeared two months ago before they showed up – dead – again. And every victim was found two weeks after the last victim. Kelly Perez, Gavin Rogers, Nadia Edwards, Jack Hill, Lucas Tanner. The only thing we've noticed is the time stamps. Nothing else seems to connect them."

Connor was looking at the wall with a curious expression. She let him analyze the data, turning her attention to the coffee she abandoned on her desk when she went to pick him up from the waiting area. He looked marvelous – especially now that he was at work and he had that clever expression on. His broad shoulders, straight back, that lone lock of hair falling in his forehead, his curious, analyzing expression... oh it'd be difficult for her to concentrate, she discovered.

"According to the time stamps, we have a week before the next victim shows up", Connor stated a few seconds later.

"Yes", she nodded, letting him work.

Connor remained silent for a while again. She started to reply mails and messages, told her superiors he'd arrived well and fine and that they were already at work, then she glanced at the wall as well.

"But the time stamps won't help us at all", she sighed, "Every victim was dead one or two days after the were taken." She grabbed the folders with each case and pushed them over to him. "Why don't you sit?"

Hours later, deep into the afternoon, Connor glanced up from the files. He'd opened and spread them in front of himself on the desk, to see everything at once. How could he do even this so neatly? Isabella wondered to herself. If a human did it, it wouldn't look so organized.

She was submerged in writing a report on another case, and was promptly startled when Connor spoke. She wasn't used to someone else being directly next to her.

"Detective, shouldn't you have lunch?"

She glanced up at him from my screen. His calculating look all too familiar; she'd spent a lot of time with androids before. He had been scanning her for who knew how long by now.

"I'm sorry?"

"Shouldn't you have lunch, Ms. Johnson?"

She blinked, confused, then glanced at the time on her screen. Noon. With a grimace, she shook her head.

"I'll finish this first."

Minutes later, Connor spoke up again.

"Detective." She glanced up at him when he stood up from his desk. "It's been two hours since you said you'd finish your report. I suggest we go out and grab something to eat."

Two hours ago? Impossible. Sure, she did switch to another task once she'd finished her report, and sometimes she forgot about time, but it definitely didn't feel like two hours, so she glanced at her clock.

"Shit", she huffed, shutting down her screen. "Alright, okay. You're right." She stood up and straightened her back with a grimace before she grabbed her jacket from the back of her chair. Putting it on, she beamed a smile up at Connor, who was waiting for her to join him beside his desk. "Thank you."

They walked through the office, down the corridor to the elevator again.

"Detective", he spoke, drawing her attention from her work again, which she continued in thought. She glanced up at him, silently asking him to continue. "Am I right that your blood sugar is high?"

She wrapped her arms defensively in front of herself.

"How do you know about that?"

"I researched your file before I arrived."

"Of course you did", she half smiled.

Glancing at the number up above, waiting for the elevator to arrive, she thought that it also could be he was straight lying, and monitored her blood sugar while they were speaking, but she didn't mention it.

"Shouldn't you monitor it more often?"

His innocent little question made her smile wider. She shook her head.

"I take medication, Connor. I'm alright."

She glanced up at him. He was looking at her all the time until now, and he looked slightly puzzled.

"But medication is not enough." Seeing her expression, he added, "is it?"

"Why are you concerned about my health? It's not crucial to our mission."

He glanced up at the number this time. She watched the micro expressions on his face. All the little twitches, the way his eyes moved, how his brows furrowed. Then, he looked down at her again.

"I could help with that."

She laughed a little, shaking her head.

"Connor, you worry about our case and I'll worry about myself, alright? I'll be fine."

"Alright." He nodded, but didn't look convinced. "Understood, Detective."

They went down to the street, then across the road to a Chinese restaurant where she usually ate. Her mind was revolving around another case, she didn't pay much attention to anything around them until someone made a comment about androids not being allowed in the restaurant.

"He's with me", she pointed to herself and the employee paled slightly, "or do you want to lose a regular costumer?"

"I'm sorry Isabella", Jung said with a perfect American accent. "Rules are rules."

"Fuck rules", she huffed and started to walk out, but Connor grabbed her arm.

"It's alright, Detective", he said, "I can wait outside."

"And I can order myself food", she shrugged.

"No, Ms. Johnson, you need your lunch, as soon as possible."

She searched his eyes. He really was checking her blood sugar without her knowing.

"Are you constantly monitoring me, Connor?" She sounded more playful than upset. She didn't let him answer, his sheepish expression told it all. "Alright, wait for me outside if that's alright with you. I'll order a takeout."

"Sounds good", he nodded before he turned and walked out.

She couldn't help but feel sad. Humanity evolved in the past thirty years, so, so much; colour and religion couldn't stand between them anymore, but ever since androids took over some aspects of their lives, people united against them. Isabella felt sorry for each and every atrocity committed against them. People used them as they used their phones in the early 2000s, and some humans did horrible things to their property; in her eyes, humans really learned nothing.

"You should revise this stupid rule", she said once her order was ready and she paid, grabbing the paper bag. "Androids are here to stay."

"When they take your job and you're left without a wage to feed your children", Jung sighed, "return to me and we can talk about this."

"Did they take your job, too?" She arched a brow at Jung. His expression fell. "They didn't, did they? But you use them for cleaning up the mess after your chef is done cooking, huh?"

"They're still taking jobs", he protested.

"There're still plenty of jobs for humans to do", she started to lose her patience, "so chin up, Jung. This isn't the end of the world."

"Yet", he whispered as he watched her leave.

She found Connor just a few meters away from the door, playing with a coin. She watched him for a few seconds before he noticed she arrived and stopped. She showed him her bag of food.

"I'll order from tomorrow", she told him as they started to walk back to the office.

"Can I ask something, Detective?"

"Of course."

"Why does it bother you that humans treat me the way they do?"

"You're my partner from now on", she shrugged, "and I protect my partner."

~*~

Days of constant work later, she sat down at her desk and turned to look at the wall. Her feet were up on her desk, crossed, the box of food in her lap. Every bite of food went down without her actually tasting it. She couldn't even remember what she'd ordered.

"What could be the motive?" She asked mainly from herself. She was often talking to herself during the day when she was thinking. Out loud, actually. She guessed Connor was pretty much used to it by now. "Why kidnap and kill wealthy members of the society, with seemingly no link to one another... how does he choose them? Based upon what?"

Connor turned around with his chair from his screen, analyzing the pictures. She looked at him while she was stuffing some food in her mouth, her eyes looking rather at his expression now. Who made him this handsome? They should be banned from creating androids in the future.

"We don't have enough data", he stated.

"There must be something other than them being successful", she mumbled, her mouth still full of food. "That doesn't narrow it down one bit."

"Well, they were scattered across the state", Connor moved his hand over the map, and it zoomed out, and he pointed at a dot, "but we know they were all born in this city."

That was the city she was born at. She had a nagging feeling at the back of her mind that this whole case was somehow connected to her, but she always shrugged it off.

She observed the way Connor moved. The first androids were so sluggish, more robot-like, but Connor felt and looked like a real, living, breathing person. If he hadn't had the glowing LED circle at his temple – and if he didn't look like he was buffering sometimes during the day –, she wouldn't tell he wasn't a human.

She thought of her childhood at the sight of him, of an android, an older prototype, one which she grew close to, one who was her friend, her most trusted until the day she lost her. Ever since her, she always looked at androids from a different point of view.

She brought another mouthful of food up with her fork, but her hand stopped mid-way, her mouth agape. Shock froze her mind at the realisation.

"Connor", she whispered, and he looked at her, tilting his head at her frozen state, her shocked, paled expression. "You're a genius!"

"I'm sorry?" He asked, but she didn't answer him as she tossed her box of food with the fork on her desk and grabbed her phone. "I don't understand-"

"Silvie", she said as her coworker picked up her phone on the other end of the line. "I'm working on the Bard case. I don't know why we haven't thought of this before but what did they have androids?"

"Yes, they did", Silvie replied and Isabella cursed.

"So? What do we know about the victims' androids?"

"I'm sending you their files right away", Silvie replied quickly as it clicked in her mind why Isabella was asking this, "but there's not much on them."

"Send me everything you have", she squished the gadget between her ear and shoulder, opening up her e-mail, feeling Connor's eyes on her. "Are they still available? We need to talk to them."

"No, they're not", Silvie said with a sigh.

"No? Why?"

"They're gone. Their mind palaces were destroyed, we couldn't gather any data from them. We've sent their remains back to CyberLife."

She stared at Connor.

"Are you telling me we have ten victims, not five? How come they never mentioned the androids as victims?" She paused. Silvie remained silent, Connor's expression fell, and so did Isabella's. "Ah, right. They should've included them! Fuck!" She ran a hand in her black hair. "Alright fuck it, send me everything you can gather about the androids."

Half an hour later she was still reading all the data they were given while Connor was silently doing the same.

"How could I be so stupid?" She mumbled to herself as she rubbed her temples, elbows on the desk.

"Pardon?"

She looked at Connor with her most defeated, deflated look.

"I should've thought of this way before." She rubbed her face with her palms and sighed as she dropped herself backwards, resting her back and head against the chair's backrest. "The way humans are treating androids just fucked my brain up. I hear and see it day and night, every time I walk down the street, when I turn the telly on, when I want to read the news – all the hatred, Connor, it's blinding people. It blinded me. I forgot this crucial detail." She paused and pulled her lips into a frown. He looked back at her with a politely curious expression. "I apologize."

"For what, Detective?"

"That I needed your physical presence for this." She motioned at her monitor. "Of course they're all wealthy, of course they couldn't be alone. They needed help. The help of an android."

"As you need my help for your work", he pointed it out, and this comment left a sour grimace on her face. "I apologize."

"Don't", she waved. "You're right. I needed you. And I still need you." At his questioning look, she half smiled. "We haven't caught him yet, you know."

"Ah, right." He glanced over her desk, his eyes stopping at her abandoned food. "Your lunch turned cool."

"I can't eat anyway", she sighed, grabbing the box and throwing it in the trash. "The number just doubled. I feel sick." She stood up and used a pencil to get her shoulder long hair up in a bun. She started to walk up and down on her side of the desk. "It's somewhat, almost... cool to abuse an android these days, you know? They buy them and use them as they see fit and nobody can stop them. Androids have orders they have to obey to, and people don't even care, they see them as gadgets, household objects, like a phone or another shiny accessory..."

"But you don't?" Connor cut in her sentence with a curious raise of his brow, and she shook her head.

"No. And it's frowned upon." She smiled at him as she continued her walk up and down. "I've had very few close friends, you know? And some of them were androids."

"Really?"

She nodded, and her smile faded.

"I was bullied for it a lot, but never as much as androids for being what they are." She bit her lower lip. "I stood up for them though, it never ended well."

"Why?"

"I guess it's in my blood that I don't like bullies", she shrugged, "perhaps this is why I chose this career, too. Perhaps I'd like to see more justice in the world, and abuse is abuse, it doesn't matter if people commit it to humans or androids. It's bad." She bit her lip and turned, glancing up at the wall to see five more faces there. She cracked her knuckles. "They were kidnapped together. All of them. They were all taken together", she mumbled, staring at the pictures. "What was their relationship like? How did those humans treat their androids? Were they abusive, or did they treat them well?" She lowered her hands and they curled up in fists. "Were they taken because they hurt their property... or because they treated them kindly?"

Again, she felt like this case was connected to her. She thought of Nora again. It was a well-buried secret of hers. Nora was her family's first android while she was growing up. She was failing at maths at grade ten, and her father threw a fit about it. He blamed the android for it, because Isabella had problems at school and the android had chats with her frequently. It escalated so quickly – one moment he was yelling, the next, Nora's mind palace was crushed with a hammer.

And she lost her best friend. Her memories could never be brought back. 

"Connor", she turned to him. "What do you think, what's more likely to be the case?"

He looked in her eyes, calculating the odds.

"I do not have enough data."

"I know", she shook her head, walking up to him. "But what do you feel?" She stopped beside his chair, looking in his brown eyes. He looked puzzled again. "If you close your eyes and listen to your instincts, what do they tell you?"

"I don't-" He started, but she cut him off.

"This isn't an order from me, but would you try it for me? If you close your eyes and think about this case, what do you feel?"

He hesitated for a second before he closed his eyes. She saw that his circle of light turned yellow, and his brows twitched.

"I don't know", he murmured, uncertain, before he opened his eyes again.

"It's alright", she touched his arm, gently. "It takes practice."

"What does?"

She smiled at his confused look.

"Being human."

~*~

That certain bad feeling had been there for too long. She couldn't voice it; she couldn't even put it into words how much it was nagging her from the back of her mind. For some reason, she thought that every death was a message for her.

The empty house had been searched up and down by the team. This time, the killer had left a body in the middle of the dining room. His head was bashed in with a hammer, and he had a gaping hole at the middle of his chest.

"Model AP400", Connor's voice sounded like it came from a thousand miles away from her, while he was standing right beside her. "Designed for home assistance. Thirium pump removed and destroyed, critical hit to the head, crushed mind palace. Even if CyberLife managed to restart it, it's memories would be impossible to recover."

She didn't reply. She was staring at the emotionless expression, a cold feeling making itself home in her stomach. She felt nauseaous.

"Are you alright, Detective?" Connor murmured beside her, leaning half down to look at her expression from her left. "You're paler than usual."

She stared at the victim's face and the way the skull had been destroyed with the killing weapon. All she had in her mind was Nora.

"I'm fine", she muttered.

This was clearly a message. She had to be very careful, but she was also very relieved she did not have an android now. She only had a cat. And her house was well-guarded. Nothing could go wrong.

A week later everything went wrong.

Connor wasn't at the station. Isabella knew he went back to CyberLife after every working day, but he was always painfully punctual after they've agreed they'd start work at 8 AM. He was never late before. The lack of messages or calls also were alarming.

Despite being an android, he had a phone. She wasn't allowed to connect to him through the web directly – that would've been the best, every android had a unique number phones could reach, connecting directly to their mind palace; that was the preferred method of communication between humans and androids –, so she was at a loss. She sent him texts and tried to call him, to no avail.

Until he called her hours later while she was on her way to CyberLife to talk to his superiors. Not having any better idea, she figured the folks at CyberLife would be able to track him down. But as soon as she saw his name pop up on her phone, she sighed with relief.

"I've got him", a raspy voice spoke in her ear, and she froze in the taxi in the back seat. This wasn't the voice she wanted to hear at all. "Your pretty little plastic boy toy. He did put up a fight, but he lost, DI Isabella Johnson."

"What do you want?" She asked him as her heart seemed to descend into her stomach.

"I need you to come here and meet us."

"I-"

"If you call for back up, I'll bash his head in", he warned her.

"That will be unnecessary", she replied quickly and he laughed.

"Good."

"Wa-"

She was cut off as the call ended. She looked at her screen, and the address had been sent to her via text. She told the driver to take her to that address instead as she removed her holster and put it at her back, in her trousers, tucking it in her waistband.

The old warehouse was intimidating, as any other warehouse. After consulting her watch, she walked inside, bracing herself for the inevitable. She didn't like this at all; someone who knew where she was born and how she felt about her first android, as well as how it ended for them… this was not mere coincidence.

And neither was it a coincidence that the killer used Connor to lure her out and kept her silent about it.

Torn plastic curtain covered a huge area in front of her. She could see they were both in there; so she really had no time to lose.

"I know what you did", she said quietly as she approached them.

She came in the killer's view with her hands up, moving the curtain out of her way with her arm. Connor was kneeling, hands tied, thirium under his nose, but he had his eyes on her instantly, a confused look on his face. Despite being an android, he was still powerless if his hands were tied in front of him, and the killer had a gun to his temple – surely, the android had no reason to believe she'd come to save him, and yet, she did. She always would. And it left him just as puzzled as it left each and every human puzzled, too. Connor was considered a machine, not a living, feeling being. But she always thought otherwise.

"I am Robert Davis", the killer whispered.

"Detective-", Connor murmured before Robert gripped deeper into his hair, yanking his head backwards a bit to shut him up.

"Robert, you don't destroy the androids", she said a bit louder.

Her palms started to sweat even as she kept them up to keep the killer calm. She inched closer, bit by bit. If she could get within a few feet, if she can be quick enough, she could shoot him. She could get him to drop the gun. She could protect Connor.

"You take them apart, right? You need the information in their mind palaces. Think about it. Destroying Connor's mind palace entirely would be a huge mistake. He knows so much about the inner workings of the police, he has so much info on other cases, too. And you're clever, because you know this."

Robert lowered the gun, just by an inch. Connor struggled a little as he analyzed Isabella's posture, the way she was moving, his eyes were searching for her gun. Frustratingly, it was hidden behind her back in it's holster, out of view, but if she could get Robert to lower his own gun for long enough...

"You separate the human from their androids first", she continued calmly. Ten feet. "You do this so you wouldn't cause the android to self-destruct due to intense emotional stress. Witnessing their humans suffer and die can cause them to turn to desperate measures."

At her words, she noticed that the blue ring at Connor's temple turned yellow. Sweat was gathering at the back of her neck. He was visibly worried about her words. Perhaps he knew what she was trying to say with this. Perhaps he suspected she'd get herself in harms' way just to get him out of it. His eyes turned even more confused, his brows furrowed.

Why would a human risk their precious life for an android?

Eight feet.

"I need you to let Connor go for the time being", she slowly approached. "I'll come calmly. You wanted to get me, all this time, and we both know that. You knew I'd react this way in such a situation because you want me. You made it personal with each and every one of the victims. Human victims... and android victims alike."

Robert smirked. His wolfish grin sent shivers down her spine. He lowered the gun completely.

"I thought you wouldn't figure it out", he confessed with a laugh.

"It took me some time", she spread her arms beside her as she stopped, six feet away from the killer. She lowered her arms completely, too. Seconds ticked, time seemed to slow down as her heart rate jumped to new heights. He still had the gun dangerously close to Connor's head, but it was beside his shoulder now. The circle of light was still yellow. Connor's lips parted as if he wanted to say something. Perhaps he wanted to stop her. To tell her that he wasn't worth the trouble. "But I caught up. You think I'm an abomination of humanity and I have to suffer for my sins."

"That's right", Robert nodded a few times before he pushed Connor's head away from himself before he kicked him. She kept her eyes on Robert, calculating the distance and his way of movement if she yanked her gun out from it's holster at her back. How quickly could she shoot? She was no android, but she was pretty good at the training grounds. "All of this was to lure you out. To have a detective, flirt with the idea that androids have feelings..."

He kicked Connor again. He didn't utter a sound, just rolled over to his back, his eyes rolling up at the killer's face, his expression calculating. Robert pointed his gun at Isabella. He had to protect her, he had to stop the killer, perhaps do both at once.

"It bothered me all these years, you know. And you know, what? You'll come quietly, and I will show you what a real, human man can do to the likes of you."

"Is that what you did to those you've killed so far?" She asked. Every inch of her was alert. She saw Connor strained himself, even if she did not look at him directly. She was aware he was ready to intervene; despite her telling him he always had a choice when it came to her, she could see it clearly he decided to protect her. He didn't need to. His mission was to help her catch the killer, and still, he shifted his priorities right before her eyes. She couldn't miss it. "Have you showed them what you're capable of?"

"No", Robert grinned wider. "I did torture them for a day or two before I killed them. But I intend to keep you alive for as long as possible. I will beat you every other hour, I'll rip your nails off, I'll tear your teeth out, cut your tongue out, pop your eyes... I'll make you wish for death, because your kind is what brings us the end of humanity; these fucking things keep taking our jobs, and you people encourage them?! Give them more power?! Hell no!"

Isabella felt nauseaous as he described all of his plans for her, but she was positive she could pull this off – or she'd die trying to escape her fate described by this monster. She saw Connor glanced at her, and she looked in his eyes; then they moved at the same time.

She reached back for her gun while Connor sprung up at Robert's extended arm which had the gun in it. Robert shot her way and missed as she yanked her gun forward with her right hand, and she shot right back once Connor moved out of the way and she had a clear shot.

It crossed her mind that she could pull the trigger in two cases: if she was protecting an innocent life with it, or if the fleeing culprit was considered a threat to humans. Connor's existence wasn't considered to be an innocent life – he was an android, and in a court case, she'd be suspended, fired or imprisoned for killing the man. Also, Robert did not flee.

"Shit", she pushed through her teeth, dashing forward to try and knock Robert out.

The man backhanded her so hard that she saw stars, but she hit right back at his face. She felt the taste of blood in her mouth, but there was no pain yet. Connor ripped his bindings off, and twisted the gun out of Robert's hand. He moved so fast the killer couldn't even realise what was happening; the android rose to his feet, took half a spin and knocked Robert out with a hit to his temple with the gun's magazine.

She lowered her gun, feeling a grim satisfaction that they've successfully caught the killer. Isabella felt dizzy, and she had to sit down beside Robert. Connor glanced down at her, the circle at his temple was red now. She put the gun beside her before she reached up to her face where Robert hit her. Connor crouched beside her to analyze the damage done to her face.

"It's alright", she whispered to him as reassuringly as she could. She didn't look convincing enough, she thought, because her hands were still shaking. "It's over. Are you okay?"

"I'm more concerned about you", Connor replied, his voice trembling. It was unusual, but she knew it happened during time of emotional stress with androids. He looked her over, analyzing her form for injuries for several seconds before he reached in one of his pockets and got out a kerchief. He brought his left hand up to cup her chin in it, then used the kerchief to gently wipe the blood off of her face. "This was dangerous."

"I know", she mumbled, touching his arm. He flinched slightly, even if her touch was very, very gentle. "It's alright now, Connor. We're alright."

"If you died and I survived- how I would've explained myself?"

She rubbed his arm softly.

"Connor, you did nothing wrong."

"I made a mistake. I got caught."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I didn't know you'd search for me."

The circle was still red. She kept rubbing his arm.

"You are one of my team, of course I'd come search for you."

"Why?"

"Because you're important."

"Because I'm a useful asset?"

"No", she replied quietly, squeezing his arm ever so slightly, "because you're my friend."

He stared in her eyes for a few seconds.

"Friend?" He asked quietly.

"Yeah", she smiled at him, "and friends keep each other safe, right?"

The LED finally turned back to it's original blue colour.

"Yes", he said, helping her stand. "Of course."

She sighed with relief.

~*~

Interrogating and writing the report on Robert was worse than a three weeks long headache. She had to make sure to be objective about it, but it wasn't easy as she knew that her recklessness was quite questionable. Every time she had problems putting her thoughts into words, she glanced up at Connor who was organizing his desk – which meant she was looking at him pretty often.

Rationality was out the window the moment she learned he got captured, and it didn't sound good, no matter how she looked at it. Sure, she was neutral about androids. She thought she liked them even more than humans. From so many points of view, humans were so flawed, and the androids had that certain innocence about them. They were excellent at most things, but so very clumsy with many other things; they were learning constantly about the world, and to her, that was endearing.

She always wanted to protect them, ever since her childhood. And yet, that feral anger that engulfed her the moment she saw how Robert held Connor, well... that was something else.

She leaned back in her seat and continued to look at him. He didn't even notice her staring at him, he was so deep in putting the correct pictures in the right folders. His motions were fluid, effortless, calm and graceful. Nothing like her family's first android for sure. She couldn't help but follow the motion of his hands, her mind venturing far, far away from the office now.

She had her share of relationships in the past. Four humans, one android. Most humans would use them – as they used them for everything else in their lives, really – but what she had with Noah was far better than any other relationship she had with anyone else before him. This was probably why she couldn't really start dating again. She'd search for him in everyone, and that was the worst of it, because he was an android. Nobody could be like him, and literally; that series of androids disappeared from the market.

But there was mutual respect, mutual care about each other's needs, there were selfless little sacrifices and love. So much love. In every little deed and sentence. He used to say he loved to be free with her.

"Isabella?"

Connor's voice dragged her back to reality and her eyes came back to focus. He was looking directly back at her now, so she had to blink to actually see his face.

"I'm sorry", she mumbled. "I got a tad carried away with my thoughts."

"We've solved your case", he said quietly.

"Yeah", she murmured.

"Which means you don't need me anymore."

She blinked. His diplomatic words shouldn't hurt. Right? They shouldn't hurt just because they were true. They shouldn't hurt just because she was just starting to toy with the idea of flirting with someone again.

Him, specifically.

God, she was a disaster. He sees her as a superior being because humans created androids with this behaviour, what's more, he was her partner, and she would get involved with him still? Should she even risk a relationship again? He was so, so much more than what she could handle. It had taken her with Noah a lot of time to go through the necessary steps for him to understand how to be his own man, and how would she be able to do the same with someone else? What was even worse, he was literally her work partner.

She was biting her lower lip before she answered.

"Correct, Connor."

He slowly tilted his head to the right as he was looking back at her. No doubt, scanning and analyzing her expression and reaction. She wondered what he got out of it. She wished she knew; how much did her face betray her thoughts?

"You don't want to send me away...?"

His question came out as half question, half statement. She puzzled him. Her words and her expression formed a paradox for him. She said she didn't need him anymore and her face said the exact opposite.

And there was her answer. She looked desperate, which, in turn, made her feel quite pathetic.

Communication was key with androids, really. If one gave them mixed signals, they ended up being confused. Clear, full explanations were needed until they learn to read their own human, to know their emotional and mental state just by a look later on. It's a tedious, tiring, long phase in the beginning.

She should not get involved with an android that belonged to the government and to CyberLife. She knew that. The rational side of her was aware that this wish was wrong. But at the same time... every time she looked at his face... her pulse picked up and she found herself wanting to be closer to him. She wanted him to stay.

Damned feelings. It must be so easy to exist without them.

She leaned back in her seat and dropped her hands in her lap, intertwining her fingers on her thighs.

"What will you do when you leave my office?" She asked instead.

"I'll go back to CyberLife. They'll probably assign me to another case."

She pondered for a moment.

"What if I said I could use your help with other cases?"

She couldn't get her mind to put up the barriers. Rationality was, once again, out the window. His eyelids fluttered, the LED blinked.

"You don't want me to go." Now, this wasn't a question. He knew. He caught her red handed. And, she couldn't believe it, he smiled. On the left side of his mouth, his lips curled up. Her heart was beating hard enough against her ribcage that it almost hurt. "I don't want to go, either", he added matter-of-factly, making her brows run up on her forehead.

"How come?"

Connor shrugged, glancing at the wall which was empty now.

"I think I enjoy spending time with you." He looked down at his hands, wondering. Isabella thought that if he kept saying things like this, he should as well call the ambulence. "And after you saved me, I think I owe you one."

"You don't owe me anything, Connor", she said quietly, but firmly. "It was my fault you got involved in the first place..."

"You're different from them." He nodded. "From the rest of the world. Which is another reason why I'd like to stay."

"Well." She tried to look like she was weighing her options. "I could find a case for you to work on with me."

"I'd be honoured to help, Detective", he smiled again, and she realised she must've lost her mind.

[colormepurplex2]

Hiiiii 👀💜 How are you doing?

I would like you to answer 1, 7 and 10 from fic writer questions ☺️

My lovely Cherry! Hi, hello, you beautiful soul 💜 I'm doing much better now that you're here 😍 Questions For Fic Writers: 1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?) If someone who had never read anything of mine wanted a suggestion, I would offer them two for the sake of covering all ground. If they're okay with reading something that is ongoing and gets updated maybe once every few months, I'd offer them Fickle Flame, it's the first fic I ever wrote/started that truly embraced my inner writer's voice the way I want it to be. I stepped outside of the boundaries that I was keeping myself in, the ones that I was trying to keep to because I was more worried about appeasing the masses instead of giving myself writing satisfaction. Fickle Flame is dark, dirty, gritty, and holds the best parts of me as a writer, I think. It's also probably why it takes me so long to write updates for it, I pour so much of my writing prowess into creating it. Now, if someone would prefer a finish piece, something that's completely and wholly done; then I would offer them Lights, Camera, Action. It's a fairly underrating piece, in my opinion. It's a Namkook x Reader and it's my first true full-on smutty mmf outside of an ot7 situation. Similar to Fickle Flame, this was me stepping outside of those boundaries I had in place, writing something that was more true to my nature as a writer and something that fit my creative voice more. P.S. I might also suggest Til Death Do Us Part if the person wanted less smut and more angst/action, though 👀

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of? It would have to be the world-building I've done for Fickle Flame. It's far more extensive than any other fic I've published to date. There are so many small details and complexities that I've worked into the fic, I had page after page after page of notes on it. I've written more notes for this fic revolving around the world-building and lore than I have for any other piece, hell the notes are longer than some of my actual works. I really wanted this fic to be something special, and I think I achieved that. I'm super proud of it.

10. How do you decide what to write? I'd like to think the stories pick me...is that cheesy? Honestly, I use a lot of dreams for inspiration. But, my longest-running fic (series), Souls of Seoul-nearing 50 chapters (across two fics), is based on a poem I wrote in 2010. I've spent the last 10 years periodically working on the lore for it and waiting for the right opportunity to turn it into something more. Fickle Flame is based on a dream I had in 2014, just the opening scene, the rest came after I couldn't get the dream out of my head. A few others are dream-based, too. Though, a lot of my other works are from writing events or prompts/requests. I also have a series I've based on music (though, I've only posted 1 from that series so far). I guess, all of that is to say there are many ways that I find inspiration. 🤭 Still open for more of these asks 💜

[crackers4jenn]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

(inside the cut to spare you)

1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 43. Some of them contain multiple fics, though. I might be pushing 50 if they were all out on their own.

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 408,702

3. What fandoms do you write for? On ao3, I've written for: Supernatural, Community, Rhett & Link, The Office, New Girl, Stranger Things. I also wrote a 'characters who were never the slayer' fic with characters from Glee, Parks and Rec, Miranda, himym, etc etc. I orphaned some Rookie Blue fics that I posted over there just because I got an anon message asking me if I could unlock them from lj.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? All destiel fics:

sink - "Where to?" A 9.06 coda. (To be fair on this, I think there was a weird ao3 glitch that really skyrocketed the hits.)

Mr. and Mr. Winchester - "No pet names, I popped the question, and you're the girl." (Or, Dean and Castiel: fake-married. Set in a hypothetical s9.)

here's a map, here's a shovel, here's my achilles heel - Post-15x19. Turns out, Dean doesn't have to ask to get Cas back.

a way not steep - Dean's twenty-six and his roommate's a guy who cries during E.T.

wedding guy - "I'm Castiel. I wanted to let you know I've been noticing you all night, and I wanted to leave this with you, before I left." (aka Cas slips Dean his number at a wedding, and a friendship/relationship takes off from there.)

5. Do you respond to comments? Not always, which is v. lame of me. I do try to, but it feels overwhelming to think up different ways to say "thanks for reading" without it coming off as perfunctory because it's my tenth "thanks" in a row.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Hmmm, maybe lights down low. 40k words of time traveling destiel just to bring Dean and Cas back to the purgatory portal where Cas doesn't follow Dean out. But, listen. I was proud of the twist ending.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? sky full of stars, maybe? Rhett and Link boning in a tent, with a sweet lil flashback to end things.

8. Do you get hate on fics? Nah.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes. Yes, I do. The kind where they bone.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? Not all that often, but I've written some wild ones. A Supernatural/Community tale where circa s5 Dean and Cas show up to Greendale, lured by Abed's Jesus movie. A himym/Community crossover where Barney enrolled at Greendale to bag some community college hotties. I wrote a Rhett and Link/spn fusion, where they were hunters.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I haven't.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I've had people ask. If they ever did anything with that, I never got tagged or it was posted off ao3. Someone did a pod-fic of one of them once, though, that was pretty cool.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? I have, I have. Long ago, @milkshakemicrowave and I were writing a Community fic together. I think I wrote the first chapter, then convinced her to write with me. We bailed after maaaaybe getting into chapter 3? I've also co-written a couple J2 fics with my Cas/Misha/destiel-hating bestie. Under a pseudonym, obvs.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship? I mean, I've got lots of those. Depends on the day. But when it comes to reading, it's Dean/Cas hands down. There's an abundance of riches and I'm grateful every day for the free serotonin.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I never posted it to ao3, but I have like 20k words written of a Dean/Cas (of course) fic I started writing between seasons 7 and 8, with Dean and Cas in purgatory before we knew anythinggg about purgatory. I got to the point where I needed to figure out how they were getting out.

16. What are your writing strengths? One of my favorite bits of feedback that I get most often is that I write dialogue how people actually talk, which is nice.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Plot. It's not that I don't have big, plotty ideas, I just don't know how to string plot along in a coherent way. I'm always so impressed by plot-heavy stories that STAY plot-heavy.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I wouldn't personally, but more power to anyone taking on that challenge.

19. First fandom you wrote for? I want to say it was Buffy.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written? It's certainly not the best fic I've ever written, but I recently reread like only a best friend could and liked it enough I've been puttering away at a sequel.

[poetryasreligion]

HEARTBREAK

The first time I reached for stories as conscious scripture was after the end of my first relationship, freshman year of college. The rupture was so intense and all-consuming that I left school for six months. During this period I scrambled for every possible spiritual antidote to the ache that would not leave my chest: I tried meditating and attending Catholic mass, saw a questionable psychic twice, started manifesting on full and new moons, spent $50 on a moss agate crystal necklace. (I also developed an eating disorder that left me hospitalized a year later, but that's a whole other chapter.)

The only lasting salvation for me was stories—songs, poems, movies, long form literature, internet miscellany. Scroll down and you'll find a list of the most important ones.

While I read them, I gave myself permission to live in the words completely. To rest in the soft crook of someone else's life experience that could parallel my own at any serendipitous moment. I'd collect these storytellers' sage reflections like a frenzied squirrel gathers and hoards acorns, repeating quotes like “time heals all wounds” (someone forever ago) and “how empty of me to be so full of you” (Jody Yeary) and "sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them" (Richard Siken) until their words turned into my mantras, sacred texts. Something to latch onto while my world eroded.

I once heard that to love is to be changed. Through heartbreak, I want to give us permission to hold onto all of those changes, really feel the weight and texture and temperature of them in our hands. It's painful and it's proof that something real and worthwhile occurred. I give us permission to lean into the ache of another person's absence and fill it with our own words—write a letter we'll never send (at least not now), talk to our friends or the mirror or the sky, document it all for ourselves or maybe someone else who will need a warm jumble of words to wrap themselves up in one day. I give us permission to hold on and accept that some kinds of love we never quite "get over" (and so what if it makes us soft? Isn’t the softness what makes us human? For the record: it’s been 3 years and I still wake up with things to tell you.)

On Sand (pg. 15) by Caroline Cappelletti (poem // time and loss)

The Fist by Derek Walcott (poem // letting go)

The Long and Short of It (hybrid poem/essay // rumination, to be changed)

Excerpt: I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

The Weight of It All (podcast episode // immediate aftermath of a breakup, moments of great comedic relief too)

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksburg (short story collection // love in all its forms)

The Unsent Project (website // browse unsent messages and submit your own -- beautiful and cathartic)

Good Riddance by Gracie Abrams (album // woodsy breakup rumination from all angles)

History of A Feeling by Madi Diaz (album // parting in its entirety)

Crushing by Julia Jacklin (album // a cpmplete relationship arc)

Playlist by me about being broken up with (compiled over 3yrs!)

How'd you get away? Cause oh, good heavens, we abided by the night But there are darker things than the absence of light And they still creak through our halls

I would build a city out of you and me There would be crime, but still a local grocery If you'd stay

Maggie Rogers, "Blood Ballet" (on playlist)

Playlist by me about being the one to call it off

Playlist by me about reaching for closure and forgiveness

(Bonus: Here and here are poems I've written about my own breakup experiences.)

[filmtv2022]

To the Bitter End: Chapter Five

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Masterlist

Pairing: Doc Holliday x Earp!Reader

Chapter Notes: The reader and her loved ones are faced with the progress of her illness. Doc & Y/N begin to truly comprehend how much they need each other. 

Story Summary: The youngest Earp sibling joins her older brothers in Tombstone with the hope that the new climate will ease her consumption/tuberculosis symptoms and reconnect her family.  But as she settles into this new life, will she find something worth living for? Someone who can tame the loneliness?

Warnings: Illness + Addiction + drinking + kissing + cuddling  (You can call this one PG-13 & the content may move beyond this rating over the next few chapters) + Cursing (This list will be updated with each chapter)

**Author's Note: Happy Saturday! Truthfully, my anxiety has been through the roof for the past couple of days, and sitting down to write has helped take the edge off. Thanks again to all of you who are reading this story, it means the world to me! Chapter six is in the works, but I have some decisions to make with it regarding the rating level I desire & feel fits the story best. Honestly, I wrote a version of it last night that is very much 18+, and I think it turned out pretty darn good... but I am terrified to post it. I know part of the reason it scares me is that I've never written anything like that before & it could be downright terrible, but the other side is that I want to make sure that the content feels right for the story. So... I am going to sit on that for a little bit longer before posting.

The soft sound of hushed voices greeted you as your eyes fluttered open. Even the dim light of the room was too much to process all at once. After a few tight squeezes of your eyelids, you were able to focus on the voices at the end of your bed. Your brothers, John, and a person you thought must be a doctor stood there whispering to each other, their voices were painted with deep concern. As you worked to regain control of your body you caught pieces of their conversation.

"...severely reduced lung function"

"How long ....."

"It all depends really"

At last you were able to croak out a weak, '"John...". Your voice barely audible, but it was enough to catch his attention.

"Y/N" John spoke your name on an exhale, as if hearing your voice had knocked the wind out of him. Doc quickly turned your way, his face softening a little with the relief of seeing you conscious. He moved with speed and grace to the side of your bed. Grabbing your left hand in his, he pulled your knuckles to his lips, placing a soft kiss there. His mustache tickled the back of your hand sweetly. With his other hand he was delicately sweeping errant strands of hair back into place, tucking them behind your ear.

Your brothers moved around to the opposite side of the bed. Wyatt sat and reached for your other hand as tears began to well in his eyes. This show of emotion was almost too much for you to handle.

The room was quiet for a moment until the doctor came up beside Doc and placed a hand on his shoulder. The physician began to speak in a somber tone, "Y/N, there is truly no way of softening the news about the state of your condition. I'm afraid at this point it appears you've lost approximately 40 to 50 percent of your lung function."

Doc's hand tightened around yours as the other man continued. He had been on the receiving end of similar words in the past, and yet hearing this information about you hit so much deeper. The sinking feeling in his stomach grabbed a tight hold over his entire body as the man continued to speak.

"I'm afraid there isn't much I can do at this point to alleviate your symptoms. The best thing I can tell you to do is rest" The doctor turned now to address your family.

"Be sure to call when her condition changes"

Not if...when. His choice of words in that moment hit you differently than you expected. You thought you had come to terms with the fact that you were dying, but that old familiar feeling of anxiety swept through your body, settling in like an knife. Tears were threatening to spill down your cheeks as the physician turned to leave.

You could feel yourself pulling away from the people around you, both physically and emotionally. You knew the pain you were causing in their lives and it drove that knife ever deeper. Guilt, anxiety, fear... pulsed through your body with every heartbeat.

Your eyes were closed in an attempt to keep the tears from falling. Wyatt was the first to make a move. He leaned down and place a kiss to your forehead before standing. Morgan was next, kissing the side of your head before whispering, "We love you Y/N girl".  There was a small, empty moment before Virgil approached your bed. Virgil had always been the truest emotional rock, unwavering in his stability.  But in that room, staring at your weak frame huddled beneath the covers, Virgil finally broke. His solid weight settled where  Wyatt has been previously. You could feel his eyes on your face urging you to look at him. Finally, you willed yourself to open your eyes and meet your oldest brother’s gaze. 

A singular quiet sob left his body as Virgil promised, "Whatever you need, whenever you needed it. Rest well Y/N." He opened his mouth as if to speak again, but pressed his lips back together before giving your hand a squeeze and rising from the bed.

Wyatt, Morgan, and Virgil all began to move towards your door, understanding that you and John needed a moment alone. 

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There were so many things you both wanted...needed to say, but every word seemed to catch like glue in your throats. Instead, you and John sat in heavy silence for what felt like an eternity.  Doc wrapped both of his large hands around yours as his mind endlessly spun, flipping through all of the memories you shared. Every smile...every dance... every caress of your skin. With his whole heart he wanted to stay with you, never leaving until you asked him to go or his Maker called him home.

A wheezing breath shook Doc back into the room. Your voice was quiet, but remarkably clear as it cut through the air.

"Stay with me John. Please, don't leave"

Leaning forward Doc lightly pressed his lips to yours before pulling back just far enough to say, "I'll stay as long as you'd like. To the bitter end, if you'll have me"

Hot tears began to flow from your eyes. Feeling him begin to lean back you pulled your hand from his only to thread your fingers through his soft hair and guide his lips back to yours. You could have stayed like this forever, your lips moving together in a gentle, yet passionate kiss. So many unspoken feelings were shared in this embrace, and soon John's face was also damp with tears, some of them yours, while others were his own.

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Eventually, you parted. John stood and without speaking removed his holster and shoes, his jacket was already flung over the bedpost. You tracked him as he made his way to the other side of the bed. Slowly, Doc eased back the covers and laid down in the bed. As he settled, you rolled on your side to face him and without a second thought, he pulled you close. His arm was wrapped around your back and began to trace the length of your spine as your legs tangled beneath the sheets. You took your other hand and placed it on top of his heart, Doc covered your hand with his.

And there you stayed, as sleep finally overtook you both. Your lives were no less perilous than before, but here in each other's arms, it didn't matter. Here you'd never be alone.

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Taglist:

@luckyladycreator2

@sassyactorsandmanyfandoms

[drippingmoon]

This or That Writer Edition

Done this before, but y'know, you're completely right @sleepy-night-child. I'm gonna take this as an opportunity to ramble some more because I really feel like it. Thanks so much, nightfriend❤ this really is therapeutic

And for that matter, anyone can join me. Open tag<3 the questions will be, uh, behind the cut.

1. historical or futuristic

I kinda love reading about history hahaha, and it was mostly fantasy in medieval settings that got me into writing, so this is a no-brainer. (Even my sci-fi shortie will have some dated technology🤣 for plot reasons, of course)

2. the opening or closing chapter

Mmm idk what it is about them, but endings always come to me naturally🥰 surprisingly with 'quiv it was both, but it was also meant to be a short story before it spun out of control🤷‍♀️ and though I kinda know where I wanna start Icy, fun fact! I have the endings for all three books down and detailed😇 I guess it's always the ending that draws me to writing a story🥺

3. light + fluffy or dark + gritty

how do you even separate them. Okay, when I first started writing I was all for the latter, but that changed quickly. 'Quiv has me loving it as much as I do especially because at its core it was a warmer, gentler story full of hope🥰

4. animal companion or found family

Before 'quiv, my casts used to be fully animal or >50% comprised of animal characters. Even now angel mannerisms are more bird-like in nature than human🤣 animals have always owned my entire heart❤ you've never known true love until you've had it curl in your lap🥺 Also, I'm all for the 'two people against the world' which doesn't really fit found families

5. horror or romance

Just saying, the Turning🤷‍♀️ and some of you might know I'm all about platonic love, soooo. Oh, and my sci-fi shortie will also be horror🤔 though I guess Icy breaks the mold and is a romantic comedy...

6. hard or soft magic system

Can't really have dances and song as time and emotion magic feature as a hard system. And I like to surprise myself when writing too🤣 so no systems. Would make me anxious and 100% like all my plans I would *not* follow them lol

7. standalone or series

...not gonna lie, I'm really drawn to series🤣 but that's also how I got burnt out, and since 'quiv is my love, I'll go with standalones. They're a much different writing experience🤔 feel a lot more compact. There's no "later", and that hit differently and in a good way😳

8. one project at a time or always juggling 2+

I did try juggling. I really did. I said, if I get in the mood to start something else, then that's what I'm gonna do. But apparently only one wip can devour my entire mind at a time, and though I can brainstorm for the others, after a few hours I just yearn to go back to 'quiv, you know? It's complete brainrot🥰🥰

9. one award winner or one bestseller

One finished book, I digress lmao

10. fantasy or sci-fi

^same as the historical/futuristic one. I guess fantasy doesn't have aliens🤔 and it's been growing on me lately with all y'all wips🥺🥰 but fantasy will always be my beloved

11. character or setting description

Character descriptions run the risk of turning into lists😬 I mean, settings also should. But for some reason they've also come more naturally to me, and I enjoy them loads more🥰 and lately I've started describing characters like settings, ie 'as beautiful as rain' 🤣🤣 but that's cheating. Also also. Let me just say. Star descriptions🥺 idk how angels in space came to me as an idea, but it was by far the best I've ever had. I have so much fun writing the setting💞

12. first or final draft

If final drafts are anything like, second, third, fourth drafts, then first drafts oh my god

13. Literary or commercial genre

I don't believe in these genres lol

14. love triangle in everything or no romance arcs

Never seen the appeal about love triangles, but then again I'm not a romance person. Just give me two people loving each other deeply and it'll turn into 'quiv I'll be satisfied🥰🥰 and no, for the record, it doesn't have to be carnal for it to be love or soulmates to me

15. constant sandstorm or rainstorm

How can you not love rain?? For plot-related reasons or not, once it gets to the rainy season I really feel like it's restored some life to me🥰🥰 and rainy settings are godsends for scenes. That, and I've never been fond of desert settings

[batarangsoundsdumb]

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough