#it's not murder

[mangotangerine]

random rambles about fanfic

the winter sadness has captured my soul and what normally takes me 1 week is now taking 2 (ch36 of it's not murder, it's research and waste disposal will be up tomorrow) and it makes me sad and weirdly worried that people will lose interest, so i'm going to ramble at the like 7 people who follow me for my radiostatic human AU about the fic because i can't take ADHD meds at 9:52 PM and thus am incapable of wrangling together this 8k behemoth of a chapter that's now going to be 2 chapters because I've still got like 2k words to go and then rounds of editing

chapter 7 of when boys grow up is also mostly done so that should be this week as well.

anyway, rambling below the cut for people interested in the writing process & the differences between the two fics (beyond the obvious)

I have never, before this year, written anything longer than like... 22k. now i've got a 180k (completed!!!! what the fuck!!!!) hellaverse crossover fic that's arguably the most hilarious thing I've ever written (Accidental Bodyguard for Hire for anyone interested. very different vibe but good times and hijinks, the series it belongs to is 260k and has canonverse radiostatic) and the first thing I have seriously written in literal years. I mean I've sort of been working on two original things over the past 4-ish years but writing in isolation, without the feedback you get from fanfiction, is hard.

I got laid off (along with the rest of the company) from a damn good job March 1st and it took until late June to get another one and filled my idle time getting my writing skill back to where it was when I stopped approximately 5 years ago. I'm mostly there now, I think, nowhere to go but up from here. The rewritten maman marie scene from chapter 18 (which I rewrote as an exercise prior to writing the spirit marriage scene in chapter 27) is I think when I got back to where I used to be before.

Anyway, it's not murder (inm) started as a thinly veiled excuse to write radiostatic smut where Vox didn't have a TV for a head (hence chapter 1's "sometimes you just want them to kiss without alastor licking a television" author's note) and turned into... what it is now. This 200k+ exploration of the human condition behemoth with a vague plotline (and more smut scenes than chapters), and a challenge to see how dirtynastywrong I could get my writing.

I have a vague idea of how it's going to end (and have the catalyst scene mostly written) so everything in between is me being like "haha what if this happened" and hoping the whole thing doesn't become boring and repetitive.

I kind of waffle between, "this is fanfiction you don't need to write this like it's a novel" and, "but the plot is all over the place and there is no clear delineation between each arc so it must be getting boring and too long" and have mostly settled on "fuck it, it's fanfiction" for inm.

I'm always thrilled every time someone comments or says they've reread it even once because like WOW somebody LIKES MY ART, especially so with the OCs I've written in (so many people always say they hate OCs, but I like to think I've done a good job with mine).

Especially because the fic has become something beyond the initial plan. I didn't go into this thinking I'd explore trauma, the real impact of Hurricane Katrina, racial themes, critically endangered languages, or learn half as much as I have about the human body, let alone do it as elegantly as I seem to have managed.

You should see the amount of fucking scientific journals I've downloaded and read, surgery videos I've watched and anatomical models I've studied to make sure I get this shit right (apart from like the obvious "suspend your disbelief about the lack of safe sex and atrocious lab etiquette and the fact that these two somehow have yet to be caught and the CIA doesn't work like that really but I do know the pay scale is correct because I researched that") and I'm just... really glad people are enjoying it.

Some shit is off the cuff but so much of it is intentional choices made that I don't think are obvious at the surface level—vox being big and buff and also a subby little bitch boy who calls alastor baby as a subversion to the "smaller character is the bottom" trope; *so* much of alastor's history and character a deliberate subversion to racial tropes; taking care to flesh the side characters out as believable people with inner worlds (i even made some spotify playlists for vox, alastor, catarina and velvette as a fun little exercise); figuring out what traumatic, lifechanging incidents could have happened to turn these two characters into violent serial killers; figuring out how to navigate sexual assault and child abuse without it coming across as overdramatic and titillating for entertainment effects; showcasing two objectively monstrous people as sympathetic humans with brief "oh yeah I forgot they're literally fucking evil" moments because i feel like it's important to remember even the monsters amongst us are just as human as we are, anyone is capable of great evil—there's a lot more, but I wouldn't have been able to work through any of it without all the comments and encouragement.

most of INM is still like off the cuff random "haha what if" scenarios, vs. when boys grow up (wbgu) which is meticulously plotted out with a beginning and a middle and an end, figuring out how to weave in bits and pieces of wbgu to inm and inm to wbgu along the way, and like if anyone wants any resources on louisiana creole (a critically endangered language) I have so much. I spent hours and hours but managed to dig up a copy of an old out-of-print dictionary, even.

there's a lot more "exploring the human condition and specifically xyz" i have planned for wbgu but those are spoilers so you cannot know about them!

I don't know why I wrote all this out tbh, some of it is like a "thank you for the support, this is what i've been able to accomplish because of you, you have no idea how much it means to me" and some of it is like a "see! it's not just brainfucking torture porn! i put thought into it!" kinda thing and some of it is a "please don't get bored of me i put so much work and thought into this shit"

and some of it is a "hey ask questions there is so much that will not make it into the fic that has a big behind-the-scenes impact"

so, uh, thank you, i guess. especially if you've read this far. look for 2 new chapters before american thanksgiving, one for inm & one for wbgu, and feel free to ask whatever questions you might have because there's a 99% chance i've thought about it and made a deliberate choice around it.

[brainrotcharacters]

When irl pisses me off, I rewatch the Honda Odyssey scene to relax

[purpleminte]

God sending his silliest soldier:

[lovelymimic]

The Murder Victims Killer would come to be known for their calling card; a dead body left at the scene of each murder.

[good-old-gossip]

The first Palestinian athlete to participate in the Olympic games died on Wednesday at the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza as a result of kidney failure due to power outages and medical shortages as a result of the ongoing Israeli war and siege of the enclave.

Majed Abu Maraheel, who passed away at the age of 61, became the first athlete to be the flag bearer and represent Palestinians at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996. Being a distance runner, he competed in the 10km race.

Since his breakthrough on the world stage, more than 20 Palestinian men and women have been able to compete at Olympic competitions.

"He was a Palestinian icon, and he will remain as such," his brother told Paltoday TV after the funeral.

"We tried to evacuate him to Egypt but then the Rafah crossing was closed (by Israel), and his condition kept deteriorating."

In his preparation for the Olympics, Abu Maraheel would often be seen on his daily runs from his home in Gaza to the Erez Crossing with Israel, which Israel closed in October after imposing a full blockade on the Strip.

Last month, it was reopened for the first time since then.

He would often have to pass through that crossing for his job as a day labourer in Israel. After participating in the Olympics, Abu Maraheel went on to become a coach for other Palestinian runners hoping to replicate his presence at the international competition.

Abu Maraheel's death highlights the grim fate of many Palestinians who are facing kidney failure in Gaza.

A report from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in March found that there were between 1,000 to 1,500 patients in Gaza with kidney failure, and that they are facing a "slow death" because of "a lack of medical and therapeutic services, medications and other necessities".

Israel denies blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, though aid agencies say they are not able to get aid in because of Israeli restrictions.

[gibbearish]

love when ppl defend the aggressive monetization of the internet with "what, do you just expect it to be free and them not make a profit???" like. yeah that would be really nice actually i would love that:)! thanks for asking

[prokopetz]

Small town murder mystery where it eventually turns out that literally everyone in town is a member of some secret society or sinister cult – except it's not one big secret society, it's a bunch of little ones, ranging from as many as a couple dozen members to as few as three. Each secret society is aware of their own immediate allies and rivals, but none of them have the complete picture of how extensive the town's secret society problem is, nor do they know that every single resident is a member of at least one. Some residents are members of multiple secret societies. Some residents are unwittingly members of multiple secret societies, having mistakenly concluded that Secret Society A is Secret Society B's hidden inner circle, when in fact they're unrelated. There's at least one pair of secret societies whose leaders each believe that the other is a false front that they set up to distract their enemies. This goes on for five seasons.

[gooseworx]

Another Cyn doodle because I have a problem.

[everwalldigan]

Thinking about that series on TikTok where canon batfamily characters meet their fanon counterparts and I think all canon characters would have a sort of disdain to borderline hate for their fanon versions EXCEPT BRUCE. Canon Bruce would be seething with jealousy

Canon Bruce: so you’re saying… most of them live with you. In Wayne manor. And it’s not burned down every week.

Fanon Bruce: yup! All of them except Jason, he and I don’t get along very well you see… he’s always angry with me so the weekly family dinners are always tense ://

Canon Bruce, through gritted teeth: you see him regularly? Must be nice.

Fanon Bruce: it is! The kids can get a bit rambunctious at times but thankfully their older brother Dick is always there being the good responsible mentally stable older brother he is so there’s not much damage except the broken vase or two

Canon Bruce, glaring daggers: is that so.

Fanon Bruce: there’s also Tim, he can’t get enough of his coffee, sometimes I have to replace it with decaf just to get him to sleep!

Canon Bruce, who has found Tim napping in places he didn’t think was humanely possible to sleep in: hnn

[houseofbrat]

Boeing Killed A Guy!

[link]

[mangotangerine]

I'm slowly making my way through research and waste disposal (on chapter 18 now) but have a question that I just can't get out of my head...

If the version of Vox in your story was to go to Hell after everything that happens in this universe... Would his Demon form still be the one in canon? Or do you think it would be something else, morphed by the path his life has taken with Alastor?

Ahahaha FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK

I actually wrote a scene where they end up in Hell together!! I'll put it below the cut (minor spoilers for up to chapter 18).

I had contemplated changing up his appearance, but him being funny TV-man was too good to pass up.

The spirit binding persisting past death isn’t the surprising part for Alastor, nor the fact that they’ve ended up in a land of eternal punishment. But Christian Hell? Knowing Peter and Beatrix have to be around somewhere? And his fucking cousin? Not okay. Not even remotely okay.

At least he gets to murder indiscriminately here, if his little walk through wherever the Hell (heh) he is is any indication. He avoids stepping in a puddle of oozing… fluid, but just barely. Gross.

He wonders what Vox looks like, hoping he isn't the only one with strange new physical traits. He has antlers. And a tail. Vox is going to lose it, as soon as he finds his idiot.

He heads in the direction his heart is dragging him—and how disgustingly romantic is that?—and ends up outside a TV sales and repair store. Brows furrowed, wondering what the hell Vox is doing in here, he steps over two half-melted corpses and enters the store. It’s dingy, wallpaper peeling, linoleum floor scuffed, and looks like a converted laundromat. Very odd. The TVs on various shelves are haphazardly placed, some at risk of falling off the shelves buckling under their weight, but he barely has time to pay attention to that because his attention is drawn to the front of the shop.

This is where his heart has taken him, into this run-down sad excuse for a fucking Radioshack, watching two complete losers argue about television repair. The man—demon—behind the counter has a screwdriver for a left arm. What a bizarre place. He thanks whatever demonic deity who had taken pity on him that he only ended up with a tail and some antlers. And fuzzy ears.

“What do you mean you can’t swap out my head?” the person arguing with the shopkeeper says. “I’ve got a perfectly good head to swap it out with. This is a TV repair place, is it not?”

Alastor watches in dismay as the man with a fucking flatscreen television for a head lifts the dismembered head of some random demon, complaining in Vox’s voice.

“You’re a fucking television?!” Alastor asks, horrified.

The TV-man—Vox, it’s Vox, he can tell—whips around, wide-eyed. “Fuck,” he hisses. “I was hoping to… to have it fixed. Before I found you.”

Alastor glances to the decapitated head, still in Vox’s hand, then back to the electronic façade serving as his husband’s face. “You couldn’t have picked a better-looking replacement?” he asks, making a face.

Vox is stunned silent for a moment. “You prefer the fucking flatscreen to this?” he asks, holding the still-dripping head aloft.

Alastor grimaces and nods. “Unfortunately.”

“Well fuck,” Vox sighs, tossing the head aside.

“Hey!” the shopkeep yells. “No littering!”

Vox turns, eyes narrowed. “Get fucked or I’ll zap your stupid little face off like I did the two creatures outside your fucking shop.”

Alastor walks close, placing a hand on Vox. He had noticed the two half-melted corpses when he walked in, but he’d thought they were just part of the odd decoration. “That was you?” Alastor asks.

“Huh? Yeah. They called me names, so I killed them. You can kill people here! Isn’t that cool?” Vox asks, beaming.

Alastor sighs, closing his eyes for a brief moment. He’s in love with a television. So much for that cruel Hellish deity taking pity on him.

“Ooh, you have a tail?!” Vox asks, reaching around to grab it, and Alastor smacks the side of his TV head.

“Do not touch my tail,” he snaps.

Vox blinks at him. “Did you just hit me?”

“Yes,” Alastor says, eyes narrowed. “And I’ll do it again.”

“Fuck yes,” Vox hisses, and Alastor lets out another dismayed sigh. Even in death, Vox is a masochist. Lucky him.

[rozecrest]

there are 40 days left to fulfill the municipality of gaza's life-saving campaign!!!

water is life. infrastructure must be rebuilt. about 190k usd are left to reach this goal.

donate here! every dollar gets us closer!

if you have a clean and consistent water source that is a privilege. it always has been in this world. here is a chance to give that back to a place in dire need. take it! this goal can and must be filled!

[saelrum]

"Was I sweet once?"

[brainrotcharacters]

That's that shit eating grin that practically screams "Harder! HARDER!" except the homoerotic subtext is a tripwire they're crash landing through

[queer-cannibalistic-vampire]