#i had so much fun thinking this all out

[kitkatt0430]

Something that's been rattling around for some years now...how exactly would Slade have reacted if it had been Oliver who was the one killed by Ivo? How would that have rippled out into the Arrowverse? Would the Undertaking have succeeded or would a Mirakuru enhanced Slade along with Sara and Shado - presuming they also managed to survive the Island - have managed to get to Starling anyway, if they'd managed to retrieve The List?

I had not considered this kind of AU before but now you are giving me ideas... ^_^

So I do think Slade would still have reacted really badly. Honestly, I think the only death out of the trio he wouldn't have reacted badly to while hopped up on Mirakuru is Sara because he didn't know her well enough. But while Slade was in love with Shado, he'd still come to care a great deal about Oliver despite Oliver sleeping with Shado. (Oliver still in the 'cannot do relationships that aren't super messy' stage of his life, it's still hilarious to me that his relationship struggles on the 'present' day part of the show are still improvements on his past relationship screw ups.)

Slade would probably handle things a bit better at first, but much like how canon Slade started hallucinating Shado in his anger/grief over her death, I think he'd start to see Oliver as the representative of the Mirakuru anger/paranoia/mental instability it induces and he'd still wind up become a problem that Shado, Sara, and Ivo's prisoners have to deal with after Ivo himself is killed.

Rewind a bit to the moment of Ollie's death. He's still put on the spot by Ivo, who is a rapist and misogynist and all around piece of shit. Ollie can't choose who lives and who dies. At least not between Shado and Sara. So Oliver says "me. Shoot me" and Ivo does it. He thinks it'll be easier to keep two women in check anyway, he doesn't know that Shado's a badass and that killing Oliver in front of Sara (after threatening to kill her first) is gonna be the snapping point for his 'docile lab assistant/rape victim'.

For drama, Oliver's death isn't immediate. He's shot in the chest maybe? Somewhere where he has just long enough to make a dying declaration, passing on the List and what little he knows about it to Sara and Shado. I think Sara would hang on to it, but it could honestly go either way.

Events would then play out similarly to how they did in canon. Except I think Shado would be more willing to take the chance that the cure would work on Slade. She just lost Oliver and despite Slade probably physically assaulting her in his growing anger... she doesn't want to lose Slade again to. She knows she's losing him to the Mirakuru but as long as he's alive there's a chance of saving him.

Of course, we don't really know if this iteration of the cure was correct or not. It looks superficially like the cure Caitlin and Cisco come up with years later but it wasn't developed off the real Mirakuru serum. Ivo made it based off his faulty, bastardized version of Mirakuru.

So this could go one of a few ways. It works, Slade returns to normal, he has to come to grips with his behavior over the last few days and the way he threatened Shado, but it's better than having to live with years of hurting people in a mentally altered state and then having his sanity forced back on him to have to live with it.

Or it doesn't work, it doesn't have any effect, and Shado has to kill him and she's more effective at it than Ollie was at that point in time. So Slade dies. Or maybe she's not more effective because she does return Slade's feelings after all but found Oliver more approachable of the two for a casual relationship. She can't bring herself to be as brutal as necessary to kill someone with Mirakuru, assumes Slade drowns, and instead Slade's attraction turns into a burning hatred that focuses on Shado and her sister down the line.

Or the cure reacts badly to the OG Mirakuru and it kills Slade stone dead and Shado has to live with the fact that her attempt to save him was what killed him.

I favor the Slade lives but is still Mirakuru Man option, but all of these scenarios are really interesting ideas to explore and there are probably more variations that could be considered. These were just the big ones that stood out to me immediately.

If Sara still washes up where Nyssa finds her - Sara still in possession of the List because it's all she's got left of Oliver - then this of course complicates things. A lot. Canonically Sara doesn't go back until after the Undertaking, but I could see the List burning a hole in her pocket, as it were. The League offers her a chance to develop her skills, but she's basically saying screw you to Oliver's memory if she hooks up with League permanently.

While Sara is dealing with League bullshit, Shado would take Oliver's place in washing up in Hong Kong. But I honestly don't see ARGUS being interested in her the way they were with Oliver. Oliver was useful because he was considered dead already, amongst other reasons. But Shado wasn't missing that long comparatively and is able to return to her life as a pre-med student and reunites with her sister Mei.

It takes some doing, but Shado is able to transfer to a school in Starling City to complete her pre-med education abroad. There she's able to track down the Queen's easily and the Lances only slightly less so.

She makes an appointment with Moira first and while she doesn't have the List, Shado does have Oliver's picture of Laurel which proves to Moira that Shado is telling the truth. It's a sanitized version of the truth, but Shado basically tells her that Shado met Oliver when she was kidnapped and brought to an island off of the China coast and used to blackmail her father into behaving. Oliver was there, someone her father had been mentoring to survive, and he'd been entrusted with protecting Shado. And he'd done so with his life. Probably vaguing things so that Ivo sounds like he's part of the group that murdered her dad, leaving out Sara and Slade entirely, and crying rather than being specific about Oliver's death because there are some things Moira doesn't need to hear. Shado is able to confirm Robert Queen's death too, which maybe gives Moira the push she needs to move on with Walter if she hasn't already.

Shado's visit with the Lances goes differently in that she's telling them that Sara might actually still be alive. Oliver's photograph of Laurel is once again Shado's ticket to being believed, which she gives to Laurel. She explains again how she knew Oliver, but actually brings up Sara here and Ivo being someone who both rescued and abused her. She probably still leaves out Slade and connects herself and Sara being lost at sea again to Ivo's death after Oliver's murder.

I think Quentin would probably still think Sara was dead despite Shado's earnest belief that Sara was strong and survived, but he'd greatly appreciate Shado telling him about his daughter and offer to be someone she can count on like family while she's in the states. Laurel - and definitely Dinah - would take hope that Sara is alive and will come back to them eventually, however.

Shado probably also got back into contact with Anatoly and some of the other survivors of the island, though not to the degree that Oliver did. Instead, Shado starts looking into what she remembers of the List immediately, setting herself up as the vigilante the Hood years before Oliver would have. She can only remember a few names from the List but she also knows that if Robert Queen had one then it stands to reason Moira might have one or at least that Robert had a backup.

So her first point of order is to get her hands on a copy of the List. She targets one of the names she remembers first, and while Shado can prove he's a shitty person by the time she's done and the guy goes to jail, she's SoL on the List. Shado turns to breaking and entering, sneaking into the Queen's home while they're out one day and there she eventually strikes paydirt, finding a little book that looks just like the one Ollie gave Sara. It's blank, but it's got the symbol of the Undertaking stamped in it, so Shado takes it and books it. Moira probably assumes Malcolm took it and the two have some bitchy power plays that eventually settles back into a frigid status quo.

Meanwhile, back at the League. Sara's got a mission already. The List. Fulfilling Ollie's last wish, to right the wrongs Robert Queen was part of. But she's also got a cute girl and her long-lived assassin-leader father to contend with. I can see her making a deal with Ra'as, who clearly does not approve of Nyssa's attraction to Sara. Train her, use her, and let her be a distraction for Nyssa for a while. When he tires of Sara, let her return to her old life as a sleeper assassin should he have need of her.

Honestly, it's not a bad deal for Ra'as because it gets Nyssa out of his hair for a while as he figures out who he's going to betroth her to. (Let his daughters marry for love or accept that one is a lesbian? Ra'as? Nope, he's not doing that.) Sara, of course, falls in love with Nyssa, but what's a girl to do? She knows better than to think she can save Nyssa from Ra'as, and so in a few years when he decides Nyssa's infatuation with Sara is getting to be too much of a distraction instead of just enough of a distraction, Sara returns to Starling City. She feels woefully unprepared to return because she's an assassin now and her family deserves better than her.

But still. She has her mission and she's gonna fulfill it. So Sara gets 'rescued' somewhere in maybe India or the Middle East and returns home.

All this time, Shado has been using the List 2.0 to figure out what the hell Robert Queen was involved in. She's become a local hero, no longer the Hood but the Green Arrow. With Laurel's non-vigilante-as-of-yet help after shenanigans. Tommy's too, he's the financial backer until he gets cut off but this Tommy planned ahead and had some money squirreled away in his name, maybe some stocks (including some STAR Labs stock that's lucrative right now but'll bite him in the butt come a couple more years), and a night club set up atop the arrow cave as a nod to Tommy and Oliver's childhood dream of running one together. Maybe Shado even got to name it Verdant, or maybe it's named something else entirely.

When Sara shows up, I think she'd confide in Shado about what happened to her but on the promise that Laurel never finds out. Sara would take up as the Canary and help try to stop the Undertaking too. Malcolm is, unbeknownst to them, the bad guy they're trying to stop.

Since Oliver was the connection that brought in Dig and Felicity, they're having relatively normal lives. Tommy's been learning to use a bow from Shado since he doesn't want her out there alone - Sara showing up and being her backup is a big relief for him. There's probably some Tommy/Laurel going on with Shado having bad luck with relationships - men and women alike. So maybe some Shado/Sara while Sara mourns leaving Nyssa behind and Shado is well aware this is more of a friends with benefits thing.

I could see this team up discovering that Malcolm is the Dark Archer and the mastermind behind the List - the Undertaking - eventually. Likely when Malcolm brings - successfully this time around - Tommy into his panic room for some reason. Tommy would have to essentially be undercover as himself trying to figure out what's going on and while I don't think they'd find the second bomb in time, I think they'd at least learn about it a little earlier. They'd still defuse bomb #1 and save a lot of lives. Tommy and Laurel would both survive, though they'd be evacuating as many people from the Glades as they could. Moira probably wouldn't fare as well in the aftermath, though, without Oliver to convince her to do the right thing at the last minute. Though perhaps Tommy gets through to her?

Of course, they'd have a lot of different issues from canon to deal with. Shado would have to worry about her student visa and transitioning from pre-med into a rigorous medical degree course that probably meant she was very slow about targeting the List compared to Oliver going after a new villain every week. She'd also likely be trying to gain citizenship in order to stay in the life she'd made for herself there, which would be easier for her than some given her lawyer friend Laurel helping out. And the power of being the protagonist.

Obviously it could all play out as a worst case scenario - Shado stays in Hong Kong with her sister, Sara doesn't return until after the Undertaking, and Tommy dies saving his girlfriend Laurel.... but I like the idea that in spite of a nail, there would still be a Green Arrow in Starling City.

Of course, if Slade survived and is still Mirakuru Man, then it could be the Undertaking that brings Starling City, and thus Shado, back into his crosshairs. This would also wind up dragging Mei into the middle of things, because I could see Slade going after her to bait Shado. And perhaps as a side plot, Tommy learns that Thea is his sister and that Malcolm is still alive. Despite Moira's protests, I could see Tommy recognizing what would protect Thea from Malcolm most is knowing the truth. And he'd tell her.

Honestly... I don't see Moira and Thea's relationship ever recovering in this timeline. Maybe they get back on good terms one day, but Thea's never close to her again. Thea has Walter and Tommy and that's all the family she wants or needs.

[keymintt]

a comic/zine about coyotes

[lilybug-02]

Final Bug Fact:

The world NEEDS bugs. They keep the soil healthy, pollinate, control pests, and contribute to the worlds' ecosystem. By the end of the century, it is estimated 40% of insect species may go extinct due to habitat loss. Yes, that is very scary. But with even one beetle spared, one caterpillar rescued, and one Hollow Knight comic of all things, things will change. Because I know there's a lot more Dewi's out there than most people realize. Stay curious.

Thanks for going on this adventure with me. ♥︎

First || Prev // END

Masterpost

Comic Thoughts and Pictures Below!

I wanted to put here how amazing and sweet everyone has been with this comic. I finished a 75 page comic in 3 MONTHS. I am at a loss for words. That sounds crazy and it IS crazy. But man was it fun. Even on days were I wasn't able to draw due to fatigue or business, I loved working on it from start to finish. And guess what!? This is my first ever FINISHED comic :D I'm so proud of myself. I know there's some things I want to change and the art is wonky in most places...... but I'm content to let it be. What an amazing summer adventure!

I'm hoping to post the full comic on another Comic website. I may or may not edit some of the art ^w^ So I'll let y'all know when I release it.

Interested in learning what you could do to help your local insects? This is the basic stuff. Maybe make some Insect Hotels if you have the time!!! And never forget to spread the word about bugs. They need our help just as any animal on earth.

Still Here? Well you can look in the tags for little lore dumps if ur looking for stuff like that ;)

[hinamie]

every so often i have to relearn how to draw yuuji or he starts fighting me

[abisalli]

some panel redraws with young just us

[puppyeared]

littlest furth shop

@laikascomet

[wasyago]

the brainrot won

[vaguely-concerned]

the fact that irving canonically survives through the end of asunder to be at wynne's funeral is so fucking funny to me. nothing but love and respect for MY unstoppable cockroach morally grey machiavellian mage dad!!! he's survived in his position through multiple attempted rites of annulment and blood mage plots popping up left right and center around him. the chantry keeps trying to stamp him out but his dodge game is simply out of this world, divine. civil wars, political machinations and minefields, chantry atrocities, this wily old motherfucker is dodging and weaving his way through it all, not-quite-no-hits-taken-running-it-but-honestly-close-enough-under-the-circumstances style. if solas does succeed in tearing down the veil I would fully believe that one of the like three people still alive at the end of it all would be a very weary 90 year old first enchanter irving going 'oh this shit again huh'. the maker has cursed him for his hubris and his paperwork is never finished (affectionate, it's fine he canonically loves paperwork)

[starry-bi-sky]

Unpleasant Revelations - DPxDC Ficlet Idea for the Stillborn Au

"Have you met my youngest, Damian, Mr. Masters?"

Its only from twenty years of long, hard experience and practice that Vlad doesn't increase the room temperature from 'borderline uncomfortably cool' to 'unbearably hot' the moment Bruce Wayne pulls his youngest and "only" biological son out in front of him.

He puts only in quotations because twelve year old Damian Wayne looks scarily, uncannily like one Daniel Brown. Jack and Maddie's foster son, second victim of their foolishness, and only other halfa in existence. Second only to him.

It's nauseating how similar they look. From the scowl and terrible glare on the young boy's face, to his brown skin -- which was only a few shades lighter than Daniel's, the shape of his nose, and even the strange winged edge of his eyebrow. Something that Vlad has long since come to find endearing on the child he considered a son of his own. The only difference was that Damian had dark, sharp green eyes.

Daniel's eyes were blue. The same glacier shade as his father's, who stood behind Damian with a proud, oafish smile on his visage.

It was infuriating how similar they look. Vlad might not have rapidly swung the room temperature from one extreme to the other, but he can't stop himself from letting the fury burning within his core from slipping out and raising the temperature up a few degrees.

Because it really only meant one thing.

Damian Wayne and Daniel Brown were related.

Damian Wayne and Daniel Brown were brothers.

Standing in front of him, it was clear as day. He can already picture a phantom image of Daniel standing beside Damian, the same scowl written on his face, the same glare carved into his eyes. The only difference being the dark, exhausted circles beneath them that seemed to be permanently painted onto his skin. The only thing missing being the permanent loneliness and vigilance permeating his being like a scar.

This, if revealed, would be enough to ruin Bruce Wayne's reputation. Or, at the very least, darken it quite a bit. The great philanthropist Bruce Wayne with another secret blood child? One related to his youngest? One that had been put into foster care? Seemingly thrown away?

It would be a firestorm.

One that Vlad is not keen on starting.

It would ruin Bruce Wayne's reputation, yes. But it would hurt Daniel in the process -- the harassment he would face alone might just be enough to break that fragile child completely. That was just not something he could allow. Or, even worse, bring him into his biological father's care and custody -- something Vlad was even less willing to allow.

It's not out of kindness to Wayne that Vlad will keep mum about this.

His grip on his champagne flute tightens, just a bit. He's still aware enough of the world around him to not let it shatter in his hands. His plastered, pleasant smile tightens around the corners, and he forces his focus to slide from Damian to Wayne.

"The resemblance is uncanny, Mister Wayne." He says, slanting his smile to the side slyly. Although he's not talking about the resemblance between Wayne and his son. Rage simmers beneath his skin, burning coal and embers in the core of his chest, nestled between his lungs, as he meets the man's eyes.

Wayne swaggles his head proudly, his ditzy smile widening as he squeezes his son's shoulder affectionately. Bastard, Vlad wants to spit.

He breathes in through his nose, and exhales out through his mouth. The champagne in his hand cools, and stops its unusual bubbling.

The Damian boy scoffs under his breath, his mouth still coiled upward into a scowl. With the revelation of his blood relation to Daniel evident, Vlad's not sure if he should find it endearing or not.

He is not Daniel, so he decides that it's just simply irritating. He decides to ignore it.

"And you said he was your only biological son?" He asks, voice lilting and head tilting. He knows its a suspicious question at worst, insulting at best. But considering Wayne's past proclivities, he can hardly call it an unexpected question.

Damian puffs in great offense, face twisting angrily. It reminds him of Daniel when Vlad insisted that he was wrong about something or other, and for a moment his heart swells, fond.

But this is not his child, and so the feeling quickly crashes and burns, simmering back into rage. This was not Daniel -- this was his replacement. A replacement that Wayne was free to keep.

Wayne chuckles, idiotically, as if he'd said some funny joke. Vlad's other hand, the one gripping his cane -- something he's required ever since he was dispatched from the hospital all those lonely years ago -- tightens instead. He grinds his teeth -- him and Jack Fenton would get along like a house on fire, he hates it.

"I can understand why you'd ask that, Mister Masters," Wayne says, squeezing Damian's shoulder again, "but yes, Damian is my only biological son. Although that doesn't mean I don't love my other children any less."

Bastard.

For all his posturing and flouncing about caring for his city and his children, Vlad never would have thought the Prince of Gotham capable of abandoning one of them.

But, well.

They all have their dark secrets.

And what one man throws away, another man picks up. If Bruce Wayne didn't want the treasure child that was Daniel Brown, then Vlad Masters was more than happy to take him instead.

"I see."

[krazieka2]

Here's a big old Fire Emblem Search & Find I did for the FE3H Masquerade Zine! Find the Golden Deer, but see if you can't find the rest of the students as well! For the ultimate challenge, see if you can't name every character! (Disclaimer two characters are NPCs with no names)

[sneez]

conrad veidt would make a great tragedian i think

[dizzybevvie]

You're the sunflower/I think your love would be too much

[shopcat]

i think in the hamster wheel of my mind a big part of where people go wrong with eddie and his shitty garage band as an extension is that they for some bizarre reason think he's gene simmons metal when he's jack black metal. heavy metal. he's tenacious d metal. he's school of rock. he's stoner lord of the rings metal he nearly wore blue jeans and plaid. jack black literally in real life once said eddie was the best character bc he's heavy metal like him. LOOK AT THIS

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Thank you all for voting in the poll to decide who was going to be the leader of the band! It turned out to be such a close race!

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

years later someone buys the plot, turns on the lights and is suddenly worshipped as a sun god by a bunch of puppets falling apart at the seams

pov you break into the spooky abandoned Playfellow Studios building for shits and giggles

[puppyeared]

obsessive