#i fluctuate tho

[cxsmicvega]

neurodivergent people who talk in the third person have my entire heart 💖 /platonic

[starculler]

strap in for this week's fic flavor: the failsafe episode of season one of the young justice cartoon except the simulation just won't. fuckin. end.

(fics that inspired this at the end)

If I ever did sit down to make my own fic, I'd split it in 3 parts:

The Simulation: bits and pieces of the 40 years Dick lives after most everyone he knows has died

The Return: the immediate aftermath and healing from the trauma of having not-quite-actually lived a whole life only to wake up and find out it was all fake. nothing traumatizing about that whatsoever.

The Unintended Consequence: aka the twist I'd love to add and would hint to in the second part - finding out the simulation, through martian mind fuckery, pulled from the real world (and in many cases, from real minds). Dick meets a bunch of people he didn't think were real outside the confines of his simulated life. A bunch of rowdy, heroism-inclined teens across the years get to meet the sibling/friend/mentor figure they all dreamed up one night.

(actual idea snippets under the cut)

.

Dick Grayson is 14 and most of the world's heroes have died. He planned a suicide mission that left him the sole survivor of a doomed team he helped found. The invasion may have been stopped, but is this really the price he wanted to pay?

The first face he sees in the infirmary is Roy's, and he has to close his eyes and just breathe for a few minutes because for one painful moment he'd thought it was Wally. But this isn't the world where his best friend miraculously survived alongside him. This is the one where he got his best friend killed and didn't even give him the courtesy of following behind him. Behind them.

.

Dick Grayson is 27 and has lived longer without Bruce than with him. The invasion's anniversary is always a tough day for him, but that morning seems especially harrowing. He'll get shit for it later, but can't resist stepping out onto the balcony of the manor's master bedroom (Bruce's old bedroom) for a smoke -- his first since he'd promised to quit if Jason, just 15 then, did too.

"Bad habits tend to pile up," he'd said, a rueful quirk to his tired grin. He'd tapped the cigarette twice on the railing and added, lower, "and this one's especially nasty, huh."

He inhales, watches the sun creep across the horizon, and lets acrid smoke burn through his lungs for a long moment before blowing it out in a small cloud. His eyes water, but he doesn't cough. It tastes just as bad as it did the first time he smoked one, not even a year after the invasion and treading water as Robin proved insufficient.

There hadn't been enough heroes to go around then, and Dick had been trained by one of the best. It hadn't been fair, but it had been his plan that had ultimately stopped the invasion. His shoulders everyone's expectations fell on.

He takes another drag, then smudges the lit end against the rail he's leaned on when he hears a boot scuff purposefully against the roofing above him.

"Todd and Pennyworth will be upset with you."

He doesn't turn around. Damian doesn't jump down to join him.

.

Dick Grayson is 54 and wakes up in a room full of ghosts. He hears his long-dead father-figure tell his long-dead team about a simulation they weren't meant to win. A training exercise gone wrong and only half a day spent under their mentors' careful, if slightly panicked, supervision.

He looks at his hands, watching the way his gloves crease when he flexes them in and out of tight fists. He looks at his team, their eyes a little haunted but shoulders slumped with relief even as they grumble. Batman's heavy, gloved hand settles on his shoulder and the weight of it is a nauseating mix of foreign-familiar.

He opens his mouth. Closes it.

Tears prick his eyes behind his domino mask, and he tells himself the suffocating, acidic void building in his chest is just some leftover side effect of the ordeal and not the grief-guilt of outliving yet another family (no matter that they hadn't been real in the end).

.

Dick Grayson is 16-going-on-56 and well used to the coincidences piling up between his simulated life and the real thing. Some of it -- missions and villains he remembers cropping up -- he's marked for Bruce to review and sort as he pleases. Some -- security for the cave, team building anecdotes, and training regimens -- he's shared with the team. And some he keeps only for himself.

Tim is one of those. He knows it's not fair to the kid (so much smaller now than he ever was when Dick lived his simulated life), but he can't help being selfish just for this. Tim is the one kid he's sure he didn't make up, and if Dick's taken to babysitting the kid just to be near at least one member of the family he built for himself in the wake of the worst days of his life .... Well, anyone who says shit about it can happily stand in line to have their teeth kicked in.

Despite this, it still catches him off-guard when he sees a familiar face pop up in one of Bruce's reports.

Jason Todd, caught boosting tires off the batmobile, is nearly the same age now as he was when Dick met him. He stares at the words, but none of them really sink in beyond the kid's name and address. He's moving before he's even made the decision.

He's used to the world kicking him when he's down - lived it for 40 frustrating years. But he has Bruce again. And things with Tim have been so good. And he's always been selfish when it comes to family. If he could just see Jason. If he could just meet him. If he could talk to him.

If if if if if--

.

Inspirations:

Circles in Shattered Mirrors by InfinityIllusion

Fine (But Not Okay) by CharlotteDaBookworm

Verisimilitude by mutemelody

[axiliern]

Do you have a shop? Like a redbubble or something?

WORKIN ON ONE!!!!!

i'm currently a not very financially stable college student atm though and have never really opened a shop before, but i'm working w some pals who have some experience who can help out!!!

i'm hoping to have a bigcartel website set up by december but if i lie and it doesn't happen by then, it will def happen in the summer/before summer next year!!! some things i want to focus on r stickers and keychains but i'm considering selling prints if ppl r interested in that too!

[noxinara]

alfons is really one of those characters that creeps up on u. (all 'flirty' characters are this way for me, i always start out ~iffy~ on them and then my heart grows 15 sizes) when i first started ikevil, i definitely over looked him even though i absolutely adore his design and now i always find myself unconsciously wanting to read anything that has him in it. every time something alfons comes up, im hooked. why am i like this? there is no consistency for me. all characters consume me eventually.

[asterroses]

concept art sera 🐝🏹

[hwsforeignrelations]

The duality of Alfred...

[volfoss]

i quite honestly cannot stand this book at the moment

[ivaspinoza]

being bilingual doesnt mean i can write in two languages it means i have two languages fighting inside my brain when i try to write and by fighting i mean blood on the floor of the halls in my mind

[applejuiceyjuice-art]

happy birthday!!! how do you think pre-purpleification twitch and emo phase kik would interact with one another :-P

thank u :) i’ve thought about this… a while ago i thought that twitch would ALSO be a teenager when she was first created bc i associate that hairstyle with younger guys and twitch was not popular for a while (in fact it was less popular than kik was)

if this were the case, i just think twitch would think kik is kinda pathetic and ignore them. tho maybe they would also see themselves in one another…

BUT even if twitch went from teenager to adult within just a couple years, it’d make her relationship w both youtube and steam kinda weird. despite being a fairly mid sized site, i wouldn’t say she HAS to be a teenager bc of that. streaming was a niche that appealed to adults who were 1. able to stream and 2. interested in competitive gaming, speedrunning, etc. so i think its more likely that twitch has always been a proper working adult, compared to kik, which specifically appealed to a younger demographic. twitch was just a young adult who was figuring themself out, lol

they wouldn’t have much to say, but if they met i think twitch would take pity on them and try to be nice. however...twitch was used to fitting in with the more masculine sites while in the closet and involved in gaming culture so she would inadvertently hurt kik's feelings by making fun of her even tho they were trying to be friendly.

its hard for me to say what kik would do bc she was the type who talked a lot over text, but not in person. maybe kik would try to share their own fics, interests or shitty doodles and get attached if twitch reciprocated in any way, and twitch would try to politely turn this guy away bc he actually doesn’t care abt what kik is saying and it’s getting annoying.

[lowpolyshadow]

i will be taking questions also im legally obligated to clarify sonadow kind of belongs in YEAH but usually because they're funny

[wyllsravengard]

idk what ramadan is gonna look like for me this year lol

[wispscribbles]

I want to say your style is soft and whimsical? If that's the word. Its a nice variation to a lot of the others I've seen. Sorry if my words are not wording. I love your style is just so fluffy and sweet between Ghost and Soap.

daww thank you! That's so sweet!! Drawing big buff military men has been a challenge for me, it's very different from my usual stuff - but it's fun to love a piece of media so much that it forces you to leave your creative comfort zone. I used to only draw animals when I started out, so that's definitely shaped my style into what it is. But Ghost and Soap deserve a little softness, as a treat, so it’s ok that my style is sorta mismatched with the source material

[anothermonikan]

went on a walk outside with my friends and realised a lot of this internet shit doesn't matter lol. Gourmand pictures for everyone <3

[dutybcrne]

No thoughts, just Kaeya getting the equivalent of dunmeshi’s mana sickness when he starts training up his Abyssal abilities during his time with the Ragnvindrs and getting plagued with visions from the leylines near the Winery for a solid Week

[cerealmonster15]

jesus christ like i only finished the sumeru story like a few months ago but i already forgot your literal first intro to kaveh is a scene of several minutes of him and alhaitham fully bitching at each other

[sorribu]

my teto and piko kins are returning