#still working on comms as always dw!

[zuzusexytiems]

Jean and Pieck have had their fair share of fights throughout their relationship—arguably a healthy amount for the average couple.

They’ve never had one quite like this.

Read on AO3

Comments very appreciated 🥹

[sanguineterrain]

Hi again 😊 You suggested i could send another prompt, sooo… maybe you & Jason have been together awhile, and you’re kidnapped by (choose your villain) and Jason is worried and frantic but trying to not show it of course, and negotiating for your safety? Ends up rescuing you of course, in whichever way you prefer, and then they find comfort in each-other 💗

I haven’t had time or energy to work on my WIP lately so this is very lovely and gratifying 😂👌🏻💗

aghh that's the worst! wishing you luck on your wip!! i'm glad you like these <3 requests are open for jason, dick, and MAWS!clark kent btw!

this one is very batfam focused hehehe. ft dramatic ass jason and his surprise kidnapped fiancé lol.

jason todd x gn!reader. tw: violence, kidnapped reader, reader is pushed off a building for a moment but they're okay dw <3, batfam feels, jason being a protective bf, bruce being a GOOD DAD! c:

****

"Actually, if we're being honest, if anyone has the most trauma in this family, it's—"

Batman grunts. "Really, Spoiler, not now."

The comm line crackles as Stephanie sniffs. "Fine. Stay in denial."

"Bats."

Every bat and bird in Gotham goes still.

"Hood?" Barbara asks carefully, already tracking his comm link.

"Oracle," he says, clipped. "I'm gonna get right to it: I need a favor. Can you help? Yes or no."

"Little Wing, where have you been?" Dick asks. "We've all—"

"Shut up, Nightwing," Jason growls. "Either you help me or not. Which is it?"

"We'll help you, Hood," Bruce says, voice washing over Jason like a balm.

Jason takes a deep breath. It's okay. He'll find you. Batman always beats the bad guys.

He fiddles with his jacket zipper. Moments tick by. Dick remains crouched on a rooftop. Damian is similarly poised.

"My..." Jason swallows. "My... fiancé's been taken."

The comm explodes with noise. Jason winces and digs the bud out of his ear for several seconds.

"Fiancé?!"

"You're getting married—"

"When was this—"

"Who are—"

"Enough," Jason growls, finally shoving the bud back into his ear. "I don't have fucking time for this. Yes, I am engaged, and they've been taken. No more questions."

"Tt. You are engaged? Impossible. Batman, clearly someone has hacked the line pretending to be Hood," Damian says, folding his arms.

Jason rolls his eyes. "Believe it or not, demon bird, I found someone crazy enough to marry me."

"Little Wing, I—I'm really proud of—"

"Shut up!" Jason pinches the bridge of his nose. This was a bad idea. You're in trouble, and Jason intends to tear Gotham apart to find you, but involving his family? Has he really stooped so low...

Deep breath. His focus is you. You're the only person that matters.

"Look, I'm telling you because Oracle's tracking me anyway, and B would snoop until he figured out who I'm really looking for, so it's easier to just tell you. But make no mistake: you aren't my family, and you won't see us again after tonight."

Bruce's throat tightens. His cape flutters in the wind.

"Very well," he says after a couple beats. "Last known location?"

"I'm sending you the address now. I've retraced my steps a hundred times though, and I can't—" Jason grits his teeth. He can't tear up or break things, not again. "Fuck. I can't fucking find them, B. I... I don't know if-if maybe I'm too late—"

"You're not," Dick says automatically. "We'll find them, Little Wing. We'll bring them home."

****

Your head is on fire.

It feels like there's a thousand needles pelting your skull. Whatever you were drugged with, it's hard stuff, and it hasn't worn away yet.

You look up; you're gagged and tied to some kind of support beam. As your vision clears, you see that you're in one of the new high rise-in-progress. Only the skeleton of the building has been completed because if Bruce Wayne isn't involved, construction takes forever to complete.

Faintly, you recall Jason mentioning something about a construction company leaving half finished projects across the country and using them as havens for criminal activities.

Yeah. This is not good.

"Where the fuck is he?" The voice echoes across the concrete floor foundation.

"Mike, we sent—"

"I don't give a fuck what you did; obviously, you screwed up! He's not coming!"

You close your eyes, trying not to throw up on your gag. Your head spins when you open your eyes again.

Who's not coming? Your rescuer? Or somebody worse than your kidnappers?

You try to take a deep breath, but your chest tightens instead.

"Fine," Mike barks in the adjacent room. "If that hooded psychopath doesn't show up, we'll just dump this one. That'll send a message. Prepare the explosives."

A door swings open, and you flinch. You cower, shrinking from the figure.

"You better hope he shows," the guy growls, and cocks his gun. "Your boyfriend is the only reason you're still alive. It'll be such fun to watch him fall to his death, don't you think?"

You try not to show your swelling panic. How does he know about you and Jason? And you have to warn him. Explosives. Jason's walking straight into a trap, without backup, because you know he'll be alone. He always works alone.

Mike sneers and waves the gun around.

"Oh, yeah. I know your secrets. In bed with Gotham's biggest crime lord. You must be his favorite. I can see why."

"Mike!" someone shouts. "We got company!"

Mike's eyes blaze cruelly. "Showtime. You're coming with me."

You thrash as hard as you can because if there's one thing Jason taught you, it's to always fight back.

Mike backhands you hard enough to send you sprawling. Your hands are bound, so you can't catch yourself, and you hit your head on the concrete. Blood pools in your gums.

"Try that shit again, bitch," he snarls, and hefts you up.

He drags you up a flight of stairs. Your head throbs, and now your jaw aches. You're too dizzy to try to fight back again.

You end up on the roof, which is a miasma of beams and wooden lattices. Wind cuts through your face, and you close your eyes so they don't water.

"Hood!" Mike crows. "Wonderful of you to join us!"

"Wish I could say the same," Jason says, and your heart leaps at the sound of his voice.

You start to shout through your gag because you have to warn him. It's a trap, he'll kill you both—

Mike wraps his arm around your throat and squeezes. Air stops, and you choke on your cries.

"I'll kill you," Jason snarls, and you know he wants to say more, but he's trying to protect you. "Let them go and maybe I won't break every bone in your body."

"Oh, don't worry. You two will be reunited soon. What is it they say? Love blinds you?"

"Michael Cassidy," a new voice says, deep and deadly. "Let go of the hostage. We can talk this out."

You crack open your eyes. Is that... Batman? And Robin? And... Nightwing? What—

The arm around your throat tightens and you gasp for air as you start to choke for real. Oh God. Batman's going to die because of you.

"You involved Batman?" Mike snarls, now truly irate. You feel yourself being dragged backward, toward the edge. Your stomach rolls in warning.

"Take it easy," Batman says, palms up. "We can work this out."

"You can't play fair?" Mike shouts. "Then neither will I!"

The wood beneath your feet is gone. You're falling.

"No!"

But no sooner than you fall are you caught. Warm arms encircle your waist, and you're jerked to a stop before you can fall more than a few feet.

"I got you, baby, I got you."

Jason is connected to a grapple. At the roof edge is Batman, Nightwing, and Spoiler, all holding the grapple.

You shake your head, screaming against your gag. Bomb. Bomb!

"'S alright, 's alright, sweetheart, I won't drop you."

You scream urgently through your gag, butting your head against his helmet. Jason pulls your gag half free and you choke out the warning.

"B-bomb!"

His grip tightens. "Shit. B, get out of here! Place is rigged to blow!"

The first explosion goes off. Jason meets your gaze. He's terrified, you can tell, but he tries to mask it.

"Let go," he says.

"Wh—"

"He'll catch you," Jason promises. "I trust him."

And then he lets go.

Several more explosions go off. The building begins to crumble. Dust and heat sweep across your face and lodge in your already sore throat. You scream, in the air for a few more seconds.

Then you crash into gray body armor. A cowl, a cape.

"It's alright," Batman gruffly says. "Hold on tight."

Batman swings you both to safety on an adjacent rooftop. You watch him dive back into the flames. It isn't long before Jason swings out of the smoke, then the others. He pulls off his helmet and tosses it to the side, arms open.

You run and bury your face in Jason's neck, clinging to him. He hugs your tightly and rubs your back, saying over and over, I got you.

You sigh and slacken out of exhaustion.

"I've got you, baby," he says, though his voice is wet this time. "You're safe."

Jason checks over your wounds. You see the rage cross his face several times at every bruise and cut on you. He doesn't let go of you even after he's done. He's shaking too, perhaps more than you, as he cuts your binds and completely removes your gag.

The Bats land gracefully behind you. Jason stiffens as they do.

You kiss his jaw. His gaze returns to you.

"You saved me," you say.

"I always will," he says. "Always."

"Are either of you injured?"

Batman suddenly swishes to your side. You blink, startled.

"Nothing serious," you say. Jason grunts unhappily at that. You manage a smile. "Thank you. All of you. Thank you so much."

Jason nods stiffly. "Thanks, Bats."

Nightwing smiles, face soft with affection. "'Course, Hood. And, uh, Hood's fiancé. We're there any time you need us."

"That's right, chum," Batman says. The obvious care in his voice makes you ache.

Jason had called his family. His family with whom he has a plethora of problems. He'd called them for you.

"Jay," you say, voice thick with emotion. He seems to understand instantly.

"I'll always bring you home," he vows, cupping your face. "Whatever it takes."

He pulls you to him like he can't bear to be away from you any longer.

You squeeze his wrists. "I know. It's okay, Jay. I'm okay."

Out of the corner of your eye, you see that the Bats still have not dispersed. Spoiler looks like she's about to melt into a puddle. Nightwing is the same. Even Batman looks a little sentimental.

Robin is the only one scowling, tapping his foot impatiently.

"Hood, are you not going to introduce your fiance-we-just-learned-existed-tonight?" Robin asks, arms folded.

Jason huffs. "Not with those manners, demon brat."

You roll your eyes and extend your hand to Batman. You say your name, smiling.

"It's an honor to meet you, sir," you say.

Batman laughs, and it sounds a little fond. It's also kind of weird to hear Batman laugh. "No sir necessary. It's equally an honor to meet the person my son is marrying."

Jason makes a choked little noise. You beam.

"Well," Batman murmurs. "We'll let you two get home. We'll track down the rest of Michael's thugs—"

"Come to the wedding," Jason blurts.

Batman stills. "Me?" he asks carefully.

"Everybody," Jason says, tugging you into his side. "Uncle Clark, Aunt Diana, Selina, your ten thousand kids, everyone."

He turns to you. "I-I mean, as long as that's okay with you, baby."

"Oh, Jay. It's your family. Of course I want them to come." You lean in to whisper in his ear. "I'm proud of you."

"Little Wing, c'mere!"

Nightwing tackles Jason in a hug, then drags Robin, who protests loudly, in by his cape. Spoiler snaps a picture from the sideline.

"Now that's adorable," she says.

Batman looks at you. He removes his cowl, and you gasp quietly. He smiles, and it makes him look decades younger. You guess he hasn't smiled much since he lost Jason.

"Thank you," he says.

You tilt your head. "For what?"

"For bringing him back to us."

You duck your head. "Oh, Mr. Wayne, that wasn't me—"

"Bruce," he corrects gently. "And it was. You played a bigger part than you know. You saved him. Thank you."

[nightsdreamgates]

•. * ♦️ Reala's HCs ♦️ * .•

Author's Note — I've been thinking for a while writting these whole list about my general headcanons and interpretations based of my own views and the canonical behaviour towards Reala and I want to put tonight these views.

Warning: I use She/Them for Reala and slight mention of stalking, not too much suggestive stuff or anything triggering so dw abt it much lmao

[ • ] General —

Okay, we all know that Reala is told many times as Wizeman's most loyal servant and the right hand henchman — But let's not take it in too extreme level. They won't betray Wizeman way far easily in comparison of NiGHTS' who rebelled against Wizeman after changing their point of view of the world and his work;

Reala's loyalty to Wizeman is not by a blind devotion, if you think about it, and yes there will have fear in the middle of this as well, knowing and recognizing Wizeman as the principle and first ancient intelligent form of nightmera and all nightmares;

But it is not moved by fears (mayhaps not only), Reala's loyalty and choose to obey still with Wizeman is due the agreement to Wizeman's views and laws of nature between nightmares and dreams. Moved by a political sense and the reality they take in, unlikeable from NiGHTS' change of view that can be described from Reala herself as "idealistic" or "against his true nature";

Being loyal to Wizeman does not mean as mentioned at beginning, as that Reala is blind by fear (irrationaly) to Wizeman (more of pressure in certain elements like trying to capture NiGHTS and still be himuliated everytime she fail), being loyal to Wizeman for Reala, is being loyal to the natural laws and the dark truth of being a nightmaren;

Reala and NiGHTS being created since the beginning, I like the idea that they we're supposed to be one, so when in game, Reala said between words "NiGHTS, ora imageru" (I think is typed like that, correct me if I'm wrong), can be translated as "NiGHTS, we we're supposed to be a image". The meaning behind this phrase might not make sense for our vocabolary, but for nightmarens, it can mean as same to say that "We are the same" or in this context "We used to be the same one";

In a sense, Reala and NiGHTS always had been opposite of the coin since the beginning before his rebellion, as NiGHTS used to be the one who represented illusions, the more unrealistic side of nightmares that still manages to make it feel eerie and real;

Reala's capability to drill dash is bit defected due the oversize of her tendrils, she had to exercise and at least train what she could to manage to drilldash fast as it could, but her agility is in no comparison to NiGHTS' acrobacies and agility, she always representated the brute force and the rough edges;

Reala for me doesn't wear much clothes besides the jacket and the boots, as weird as it sound for us, but it might be normal for nightmarens not to wear too much clothes (in exception for NiGHTS and Puffy who definitely enjoys to dress up a lot). There is no malice or anything for them to hide, unlike how most of us have the "weakness to cover up ourselves fearly" (told by Reala).

Reala invisible instrument is either a acoustic guitar or eletric guitar depending on her mood;

Reala capability to create her own world of dreams can say by the amount of ideya power she has as a first level, knowing that dreamscapes/dreamlands created by visitors main source is the ideya, and since Wizeman created both her and NiGHTS by it, Reala's abilities can be even be considered subestimated as well more complexitly deeper than we thought;

This headcanon can also be included for NiGHTS, but the reason why both Reala and NiGHTS are considerated as first levels is not because they have "full bodies" or a perfect humanoid look, close enough to morph and trick visitors, but because of their "visitor mind" (aka consciouness, sanity, thoughts and even feelings), the connection with ideyas and the ability to manipulate them besides absorving it like a common lower nightmaren;

[ • ] Romance General —

What Reala searches in a romantic partner there is no much secret on it, just ask and dude will look at you bluntly and answer these things: Loyalty, has a sense of indepedence, smart/cunning, mutual respect and acceptance;

Reala don't want someone who depends too emotionally on her too much, she already have more concerning things to care and having to help or guide someone all the time is tiring and stressful for her. She wants a partner who can be on her side and has it's own ambitions and indepedance as she does to herself, just as that respects the moments she need herself but still show that eagerness that if they need anytime a strong shoulder to lie down;

If you are too insecure about yourself, far too much, I'm sorry but Reala won't want to be near with a partner who isn't certain what they want, feel or do with their own life (in other better words, people who tend to be emotionally insecure or too much dependant). Now if you have few insecurities, fears and all, something that is okay and pretty common, even if you are dutiful and resilient, showing vulnerabilities can mean mutual fidelity, and that's what Reala is satisfied about;

Being able to express herself without judgment or the need to change for their partner's expectations, makes Reala feel far than just comfortable to be near the person who provides that! Even if you don't agree with her most of the time, you both still respect eachother views and recognize that you both live in different realities and that's okay! Reala will only change her point of views IF your points we're enough to click something at them to act like "Hmm... Perhaps there more than it just that";

Reala's pride is vivid but she is not egocentrical in a disrupting level to not confess that she is wrong, a partner that is able to open up and accept they're wrong and shows motivation to do better, is personally for her, admirable;

Reala can be serious and strict at times, but she also have her more comical side, that is her dry humor, sarcasm and her bold mockery. They aren't a edgylord, more of a dark jester commander guys. Someone who can keep up their humor and show a more lightful side, is always very nice and refreshing for someone like Reala who has to handle her title;

Don't trust Reala's confident side all the time, once she is shown through physical affection, she starts to behave more awkward, embarassed and even lightly grumpy if their partner do this on public;

Reala. Will. Spoil. You. If you we're her S/O. SHE DON'T CARE IF YOU DISAGREE, she will give you gifts, bring you to the most beautiful places known to nightmera, even being more cliché like writting poems to let you know that you have the honour to live in a appartment of her mind at necessary times;

Whenever Reala feels stressed, she doesn't ramble or toss rants all the time, just turns quiet. And someone who can silently be there, not loudly saying "I'm here for you!" by mouth, but by being there, is enough;

Reala doesn't expect much from their partner but all of these, too much extra can become overwhelming, but also being too little for her is nauseous;

NOW for physical preferences, she doesn't have those common beauty standards preferences like we do, they don't even care how their partner would look like. But Reala does think how is to have a partner that is contraditory to her looks. As problematic it sounds (if includes by species or race, like a human or a nightopian), the idea she keep it to herself (this secret preferance does not take away the fact that she don't care, all she wants is someone who accepts, respects and sees her hardships and hardworks as worth);

Ah also, if you manage to get her attention or admiration, is normal that she "accidentally" watches you from afar, maybe as a intention to study why she feels what she feels, but ends up falling more in admiration than actually learning what they was there intended to.

[olderthannetfic]

Tumblr seems to be sliding in a downward spiral, and it feels like the start of the end of a fandoming era for me. I've been through it before; platforms are born then die, and life fandom finds a way. I'm just not looking forward to floundering for a bit, and dreading what the next hub will look like.

AO3 isn't really a place geared or meant for the same thing, and that's fine. My only fandom-related activity took place on AO3 only for a few years between my leaving LJ and joining Tumblr, and I lived ;-) But during that time, I was my own little island in fandom. Reading, leaving a few comments, not being super active. It's only when I found a community again that I was back to being really active in fandom once more.

And it's not that I actually use Tumblr to post about myself, but I do use it to read and reblog cool things - art, gifsets, science stuff, discovering new fandoms, and the like. I'm not sure where else I could find my people, with sameish purposes. The other sites I've tried didn't fill that niche in a way that suited me, in part because of how they look and work, in part because of who and what is(n't) there.

I have DW & PF accounts just to be safe, but I'm not very fond of group chats Discord-style - and without Tumblr, IDK how I'd even hear of new communities where I might pop in once in a while, loins girdled and everything. The micro-blogging platforms are not what I'm looking for either. Sure, I can follow a few DW comms and blogs; I already occasionally do and I will be more consistent about it if I must.

But one of my greatest fear is that the next platform will be phone-based, app-only, or some such BS - and that is something I just won't be able to deal with. Phones are tiny, it's uncomfortable to write anything, I don't like touch screen and much, much prefer a proper keyboard and a mouse (copy-pasting on a screen? (x_x) << it me), art/pics are too small to properly appreciate, a phone isn't comfy to hold for a long time for me, and the app system means you have no control over anything as a user… and that anything there must be Apple Approved, dick-free, blood-free, and tasteless. And I say this as someone who's pretty much uninterested in sex IRL or in my entertainment ;-) I still support and want the tits, the gore, the everything, and as long as I have the tools to curate - oh, wait. Curate things myself? That's not something that's popular these days, is it? It's not going to generate money, if I'm happy ;-)

So… I guess I'll play some more on Neocities, and see if anyone wants to have webrings again? (it would be fun and nostalgic, but not really viable on a large scale; people who haven't known those would just laugh and point and go on the InstaTok of the time).

So here is my little cane-waving rant of the day! I know things evolve and change and that in ten years I'll be rolling my eyes at my moping. It's only that I feel tired of moving from one shitty platform to another, of fearing I won't adapt (or more accurately won't want to adapt given the annoyance/benefit ratio) to whichever new place things will move in a few years. It's saying goodbye to a former home, moving, and hoping you'll make another home elsewhere kind of sniffles today!

--

We already know the next platform. It has been Discord for a few years now.

If you want the one after Discord, I think you're looking at waiting things out for quite a few years (or until Discord makes a major misstep as a company).

True, real time chat is not for everyone, but small discords with well-chosen channels can operate more asynchronously. Just like a lot of people who hated the look of Tumblr early on eventually capitulated, a lot of chat haters have jumped ship to Discord already.

Realistically, 90% of fandom always goes where the action is, no matter how much they claim the features make that space impossible, and 10% disappears.

We might get the 10% back on the next platform or they might leave fandom for good. There were LJ-haters who resurfaced post LJ era.

But as for where you'll find out where people are... probably AO3 author's notes.

[iffeelscouldkill]

I can't offer suggestions, but I can absolutely relate because I'm in the same boat. I was on LiveJournal starting in 2006, but I never published a single post to my personal blog because "diary" style updates about my day never appealed to me and I didn't think about posting other things like fic or fandom thoughts as blog posts. My mode of interaction was always "Go to community space about a thing => post about thing in that space", so I used LJ comms and forums to do that. Fanfic went on Fanfiction.net.

So anyway, I never got used to journalling, which means that I'm one of those people gesturing at Dreamwidth and going "I really want to... but..." I use Mastodon a lot and post a ton of little bitty updates and thoughts there. I know, intellectually, that those could go on DW. I've seen people post super short posts to DW and it's fine. But I don't just want to duplicate my Mastodon posts there, and it's hard to come up with other things to say that's just for DW. I also still have this internal pressure on myself to Go Into Depth. So I think of a DW post as something I need to set aside an hour or so for, not something I can quickly tap out during a slow moment at work. And I'll put that off if it's not something super time-urgent.

I find challenges, like the Snowflake Challenge and Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, inspiring and they've spurred me to post more, but I'm stuck during the few months of lull between them. But I really want Dreamwidth to start happening again! I want the return of what LiveJournal had (even though I think I was actually oblivious to 80% of it at the time). Everyone seems to agree that it's a solid option, *but*... I think we've all still got used to Twitter or Tumblr or whatever microblogging site has sprung up to fill the gap. I agree that being able to curate stuff is nice and I would like to keep that in some form. (Pinterest still exists but I think that has become shitty too, and is also full of ripped-off art with no credit).

Maybe I should make the challenge/prompts I want to see in the world. Anyone want to spitball some ideas?

every time tumblr pulls some bullshit I get closer to trying to remember how my brain worked well enough to use lj so I can get back on dreamwidth in a more functional way

part of my issue is that the dw interface makes me feel more pressured to have Something To Say as opposed to the occasional shitposting I normally do

also I love the ability to curate my blog by sharing posts from others as I do here & afaik you can't really do the elsewhere

I'm open to suggestions for either how to rewire my brain to work on dw or what other place to go to get what I get from here

I want another place I can refer to like I refer to this blue faesite :/

[thisbluespirit]

Hi! No pressure to answer this question quickly or ever—it’s just something that occurred to me that I thought you might have fun with. You know so many good fic memes and prompt lists, and I was wondering which ones you would recommend that are romantic (but not smutty)?

I was envisioning something like a list of tropes/situations like only one bed, first kiss, fake relationship etc., because I love riffing on tropes and thinking about how different characters’ approach to the same situation would be different, but anything you’d recommend (including more abstract prompts) would be really fun!

Thanks! And once again if you don’t have the time or energy, or if there just isn’t an answer that’s all that interesting, absolutely no pressure <3

@lurking-latinist You're right, I do think this is a lovely question to get! Thank you for asking.

I'm going to include a lot of links, but if you're mean maybe using a short trope list for snippets a la the AU Meme (where there's a list of AUs that you put the same characters through), I haven't seen one like that exactly, but it would be extremely easy to make! Pick a handful (4-8 maybe? 10 is a lot, the AU meme proves that, lol) of standard fanfic tropes that you love or off any of the lists/tables below, post to your tumblr with meme instructions and ta da! You have made a Writing Meme happen! *\o/*

If you want an existing table or list to work through or to be part of a communal challenge with deadlines/mutual support etc, there are still lots around, plus ancient dead ones that you can raid for such prompts (with credit, of course, where appropriate).

Here goes:

Trope Bingo has a list of tropes for prompts which would be handy for your own purposes even if you don't want to join in formally, and it’s currently open for getting a table of your own if you want one. genprompt_bingo has prompts that don’t involve NSFW prompts (the bingo allows ships & smut, but all the prompts are gen), and some of its themed sets are tropes.  (It’s one of my faves, it’s very laid back if you did want to try a card, and the mod is a DW fan, too, which is nice.)

A fest heading for halfway through now, but also has a list of tropes as prompts - Tropetember on tumblr.

You can still find prompt tables around, both active & defunct. I have a now-mostly-dead comm called who_allsorts full of prompt tables, and there are some trope ones, like some of the 6-prompt sets here. (You can use any of those in any way you like, with my blessing!).

Unconventional Courtship, an annual ficathon (fest) that uses Mills & Boon/Harlequin type summaries as prompts, which is different but definitely tropey! That probably isn't what you're after for this, but it needed mentioning if only because it has a glorious generator made for it, that you can customise, and basically randomly generate hilarious Mills & Boon summaries involving frequently inappropriate fictional characters. (Dalek Sec seems to turn up a LOT. 8-o)

Googling lists of fanfic tropes usually pays off, too (if you’re after lists for DIY reasons rather than specific challenges you can join in.)

Once you’ve got a list of tropes you like, you can always use it to make yourself a bingo card using this generator. (It already has some good lists in it you can select, including hurt/comfort bingo’s old lists, cotton candy bingo, & a romance list). 

And there’s always my absolute favourite generator, the Ersatz Genremixer, which is very tropey! You can type in your own selected characters, and adjust the settings (NSFW options are opt-in via a ticky-box, so everything else should be fairly non-smutty).  It has prompts from several lists, but that includes a trope_bingo list (the original Genremixer option is pretty tropey too).  I put in Romana, Doctor and selected the trope bingo option and got these results, for example:

Doctor / Romana - accidental baby acquisition Doctor / Romana - fake relationship Doctor / Romana - steampunk au

I hope some of that is useful to you!  I tend to squirrel away writing memes, prompt comms, prompt lists, bingo comms, fests and random generators, so this was an ask right up my street.  <3

[snowflakechallenge]

Meet the Mods!

Akamine_chan created The Fandom Snowflake Challenge back in 2012 as a way to remind herself “why I loved fandom so much”. Over the years the challenge itself has come to mean a lot to many of us, so by way of introduction some of the mods for this year have written about what [community profile] snowflake_challenge means to them and why they are excited about it.

Spikedluv: Hello to all returning and new Snowflakes! I love Snowflake and I’m thrilled to be part of the group bringing Snowflake to you again this year. Especially after the year we've all just had. For the second time! The best thing about this challenge is that it reminds me of all the great things about fandom. The feeling of community. The comments and feedback. The squee that comes with discovering new fandoms and new fic and new friends. And while Snowflake only lasts for one month, these are things we can take with us into the rest of the year. As I’ve said previously, Snowflake has taught me that I need to be the change I want to see in fandom and gets me pumped up to go forth and be a more active participant.

Seleneheart: The [community profile] snowflake_challenge is *the* best way to start the new year, in my opinion. This is my fourth year modding for the comm, but the work I put in is returned to me many times over. I love the interactions with other fans, the new ways of understanding fandom, confronting new ideas, and revisiting old friends. The world is a rough place, but the [community profile] snowflake_challenge is a warm blanket on a chilly day, wrapped around us by a friend. I hope that among these challenges, you can find something that will warm your heart and soothe your soul.

Tjs_whatnot: Hello! So Happy to be back with you all this year! When I looked back on my DW, I was horrified to discover that the last time it got regular postings was during LAST year's Snowflake. So, if this is really all of fandom that I give myself every year (though I hope it's not) I am going to make the most of it! I hope to get to meet you all through the month for shenanigans and hijinx!

Muccamukk: mostly writes fic and reviews, usually in western media fandoms, and can never turn her back on a kink meme. She's been participating in the Snowflake Challenge off and on since year one, helping mod for the last three, and there still hasn't been any cake.

Goddess47: I'm a multifandom person but my primary fandoms are Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, Teen Wolf, and (new this year) 9-1-1. I read and write in those fandoms, although I can be seduced by the pretty. ::grin::

I was a mod for Snowflake for the first time last year and it's a blast to do! There are amazing folk out there in a huge variety of fandoms and modding gave me an even bigger appreciation for the breath and depth of fandom.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Turps: Hello all! I'm Turps and I've been taking part in Snowflake since the very beginning, though this year is the first time I've helped out as a mod.

I love this challenge. It always gets my fannish year off to a great start, but what I love the most is how low pressure it is. Some years I've managed to complete every challenge, and others only a couple. Sometimes I've done a challenge but not linked at the comm, and that's fine. I've never been made to feel bad about that at all.

I've made some good friends due to Snowflake Challenge, and many times have ended up commenting to and checking out posts from people I only see once a year. It's like meeting old friends who I have a quick natter with before heading off into the virtual distance, and I'm looking forward to doing that again.

Cornerofmadness: Hi I’m Cornerofmadness. I’ve been taking part in the Snowflake challenge for a few years now, helping out where I can. It’s such a fun start to the year. It’s a great way to get the creative juices going. The best part is, it’s low pressure. If you’re not feeling a challenge, there’s no need to finish that one. No time when a prompt comes up, that’s okay too. You can work them on your own time frame which is wonderful.

I love seeing all the different fandoms and original works that come up occasionally. It’s fun showcasing my own fandoms as well. I’ve met new friends through this challenge. I’ve been in the fandom world since the 80s and I never tire of seeing all the creative energy fans bring with them. This challenge is a good way to tap into that energy, see what old friends are up to and find new ones.

Paulamcg: Hello! I'm PaulaMcG, and this is the second time I've offered to help out a bit in the Snowflake Challenge. Two years ago, when I was still struggling to find interaction in fandom after a long hiatus, I was glad to come across Snowflake and I enjoyed doing all the challenges. I still write fic (and occasionally dabble in fanart) only in the Harry Potter fandom. Snowflake is a wonderful opportunity even for someone like me to see more of the creative, subversive, inclusive and encouraging community that is fandom, to interact with new people, and to make new friends.

Enemytosleep: January is always a really tough month for me, but Snowflake is a bright light in the chaos. I look forward to seeing everyone again this year!

Coyoteclaw11: Although I don't always participate, Snowflake Challenge is one of my favorite times of the year. I love connecting with people who share my fannish enthusiasm even if we don't share the same fandoms, and I love celebrating the joys of being a fan! I hope as a mod this year, I can share that joy with all of you.

Sjh2009: Hello, I'm StarbucksSue. I've enjoyed taking part in Snowflake on many occasions over the years and, last year, was delighted to take part as a Mod and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I'm fairly quiet in fandom these days, particularly this past year which has been a difficult one for me, but Snowflake always brings me out of the woodwork and I love reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones, seeing all the fandoms I'm unfamiliar with and the enthusiasm participants have for their chosen fandom or fandoms and checking many of the fandoms out for myself.

Flamingsword: Greetings, Mighty Snowflakes! Allow me to introduce myself; I am Flamingsword, fannish being and friendly commenter. I know that we all share a love of fandom and hygge vibes, and so I would like to spread the winter comfort with you this year. With our mutual enthusiasm, I'm sure that we can work out an arrangement which will provide mutual squee and enable us to avoid any unpleasant moderation. As a token of my goodwill, I will be helping mod Snowflake this year as well as participating. I am hardworking and hope to serve you well.

If it sounds familiar, it’s bc I’m a SW fan, and haven’t had coffee yet, so I stole the Mighty Jabba speech from SW: RotJ and filed the serial numbers off.

Lilly_c: Hello all, I'm lilly_c and I've been in fandom for a long as I can remember. I've participated in Snowflake for a few years now and always had a ball. This is my second time helping out with Snowflake and I can't wait to see what we all come up with over the month.

Tellshannon815: Hi, I'm tellshannon815, I've been participating in this challenge the last few years and after helping out with Sunshine last year I wanted to take a more active role in Snowflake too. Fandom has been the one thing keeping me sane for a while and I hope to give something back. Looking forward to meeting new people through the challenge.

Kitty_fic: Hi, I'm Kitty! This is my second time to join the mod team. I love this time of year and reflecting on new goals and dreamcasting plans for the new year. The snowflake challenge is such a fun way to interact with fandom and to start the year off on a great note. I love how it brings people from all corners of fandom together.

Perspi: Hi, I'm perspi! This is my second year volunteering for Snowflake, and I've enjoyed the way it connects us fans together and helps us find each other. I mostly enjoy reading fic lately, and I'm looking forward to finding new folks to get fannish with!

As you can see the challenge means so many things to the mods, and to everyone who has participated before, and will hopefully also be meaningful to anyone joining us for the first time this year. You’ll find us all wading through comments, welcoming everyone, answering questions, keeping the peace, so if you need anything, don't hesitate to flag one of us down.

Tomorrow starts the first of the fandom challenges, so hope you all are ready for some fun times! Feel free to do any challenge that strikes your fancy (or all of them), or leave a comment on someone else’s challenge response at anytime.

[jaydick-flashfic]

New Prompt: Transition

Whether it’s the transition of power or a transition to a new way of living, the mods’ lives seem to be all about transitions right now, between current events, transitioning from in-person school to remote learning, or a mod's Doggo having surgery and needing to adjust to not being able to run quite like he used to (don't worry, he's recovering well and is still the sweetest!).

It could be a change of pace or a changing of the guards, transition to a better situation (or a worse one), promotion or demotion, adjusting life or routine due to injury, or something happier, like a relationship or a baby, or even a new year! 

As always, the prompt is just a jumping off point - no matter where you end up, if you started musing on transitions then it will count for the prompt! Go forth and create my friends!

DEADLINE: SUNDAY, JANUARY 3rd 2021

You have a month and a half to create a fanwork inspired by these prompts. Fic, art, gifsets, podfic, headcanons, anything is welcome!

Challenge closes November 8th (mid afternoon Eastern time) when we post the next theme.

RULES:

Jason and Dick’s relationship should be a main theme. Side pairings are okay but should be less important than Jason and Dick’s relationship.

Post your work wherever you like – tumblr, AO3, etc. Don’t post it to the DW comm.

💖 SUBMIT YOUR WORK via Google Forms! When you finish, please click [here] to submit your name, title, and link to your fanwork! 💖

If you tag or @ us on tumblr, we’ll reblog you! @jaydick-flashfic​ or use the tag #jaydick-flashfic, or #jaydick-flashfic: transition (we’re going for consistency in using the dash in the title on all tags.)

Links: Rules/Guidelines, Tumblr

[flownwrong]

really heavy and oversharey vent on that under cut. i thought many times about dropping it in someone's dms, but it just does not seem mature or respectful, lol. no one should be my mental health counselor. still, if you read this and have anything to say, i'd really appreciate it.

so, i kinda suck at journal-type blogging and i'm kinda at a loss about what i can contribute to fandom—

i'm too hampered by my issues to keep up a writing schedule, too insecure to actually work on my writing via critique, too incoherent to do meta or recs, too inexperienced to do any kind of archiving, too inert to initiate anything fun, too removed from western context to fit in, too ESL to get my point across, read too little, talk too much, too young to be smart, too old to be this dumb, should care less, should care more, should get a life, should stop self-flagellating—you name it, i'll self-flagellate about it. the worst part is knowing it doesn't help but being unable to stop.

some days it gets so bad i can't bring myself to even look at others' fanworks or blogs because of this—and, of course, then i shit on myself for not doing my part as cheerleader and commenter.

but when i got kindly encouraged to try dw out, i figured anything is better than talking myself out of fandom because it's too late and fandom's best years have come and gone without me or whatever defeatist pessimistic bullshit i cultivate in my brain every day that has one point: shut up, log off and don't come back. no part of fandom will ever be as isolating as my brain is.

it's better to make a greeting post and come look at the reading page and maybe even take part in some events once than not at all, right? even if some comms keep dying out and getting smaller and events keep closing (and I keep missing the dates every year anyway and then sit in horror thinking it might've been my last chance), even if current state of the internet is bullshit and seems hell-bent on making it harder to fandom—it's not like i'm walking through barren wasteland of a fannish post-apocalypse, right? it's not like there will ever be a fannish post-apocalypse, right? you can't take away people's impulse to fandom any more than you can take away their impulse to, say, make music, right? right?

didn't i have exactly the same thoughts coming here a couple years ago—or, hell, before that, deciding to break my lurking credo of 10 years and leaving my first comment on fic—thinking i'm always too late, have nothing to contribute and will just post into the void twice a year? yeah, no, it did not turn out like that.

i'm lucky to be friends and talk with amazing folks on here and over at discord every day (even if i get choked up thinking that in the vague future where i suddenly get over myself and can create something good they might not be around to see it). i'm lucky to have written words people respond to. i have something to say that people are willing to hear. i'm lucky to have met people who have been doing this for literal decades and don't seem to be going away anytime soon. point being—i had time to outgrow fandom and that ship has sailed. i love this shit, and i'm lucky to share it with wonderful folks.

i just wish i could internalise it, too.

[claps hands] anyway! come see me on dreamwidth. who knows, we might have some fun.

heya, i know i'm like 20 years late to the fandom party, 15 years late to the journal-era fandom, and definitely also late for this — but i'm on dreamwidth now, for whom it may concern! come see me if you are too, i'll try to keep it semi-active

[seijorhi]

asks :)

y’all are killing me, but like in the best possible way 😭

rhi,,, i have been FED. i am so GRATEFUL for the MEAL. 😤 it never ceases to amaze me how talented you are 😭💞 seijoh supremecy reigns!!! and let me tell you,,, makki... just.... ✨makki “stronger than he looks, makki”✨ i frothed,,, we love our underappreciated strawberry on this blog!!!

all i want is for makki to pin me down and fuck me until i’m sobbing. and timeskip makki?? i love him so much 🥺 

and thank you, bby!! 

Rhi. First of all holy shit??? I had to take a deep breath because holy fuck that was just 🥵🥵🥵. I rarely read Mattsun or Makki fics but ugh, I really looked forward to this and holy hell you did not disappoint! Damn. Because you mentioned that this was supposed to be another Seijoh 4 fic, I'd like to consider this as an alternate version of your Manager au and ugh the biggest question! Who did Makki send the pics to? Oikawa and Iwa to tell them what they're missing out? Or to the mystery boyfriend because they finally staked their claim on reader-chan?

Hmmm seeing that the Jackals are the ones in Osaka, I feel like it's any of the four? Omg what if it was Hinata???? But I'll probably feel sad if it was Meian cuz I love him 😭😭😭

sdfghjjhgfhjkl thank you!!!!! i was like ‘okay, you’re not gonna make this about all four of them’ and then my brain ignored all of that entirely and decided just to sprinkle in some hints. i like to think that a lot of things that probably crossed a line happened back in their last year at highschool between all five of them that the reader either rationalises or brushed off, so it is kind of intended as an alternate manager au i guess.

and yeah, makki sent the pics to both iwa, oikawa and your (soon to be ex) boyfriend :)

Hot damn! Baby it’s cold outside is phenomenal!!! I loved the buildup. Am I wrong to assume that iwa and oikawa had some idea of what was going to happen?

oh no, they absolutely knew 👀 and thank you!!

wait omg did makki send those pics to himself or to your boyfriend (perhaps iwa and oikawa?) but wow amazing work as always!! 💕

one set to your boyfriend, another to their captain 😌

Sooo, Oikawa and Iwa were in on it, but why didn't they want to take part?

it’s not so much that they didn’t want to, more that they didn’t want to overwhelm you all once - but dw, they haven’t gone far 👀

The funny thing about timezones is that I often read your fics a few minutes after I wake up at 5am and lol, I end up thinking about them the whole day. They're basically my breakfast at this point lol

timezones are a bitch and i would fight them bare fisted if i could. no but that’s probably the best way to read them, still half asleep 😂 thank you tho!! i’m glad you like them so much!

i love ur soulmate aus 😭 sometimes i wish i could read outrunning fate for the first time again

this is so sweet, thank you, bby!!

out of all your oikawa’s, which one is your fave 😌

but i love them all so much?? unpopular opinion i think, but maybe home! oikawa

kuroo calling you “kitten/sweetheart” and oikawa calling you “his pretty girl/cutie” makes me 🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋

this makes me so happy because i am an absolute whore for pet-names so they inevitably find their way into my fics - glad i’m not the only one who like them haha

i hesrd soulmate dabihawks and my brain malfunctioned in a good way we can never be sick of soulmate aus

i think i promised to write something for dabi & hawks waaaay back when i started this blog and i still haven’t so maybe now’s the perfect time 👀

ahhhhh im literally gonna go beserk when u open comms i got a whole note in my notes app titled 'bbydoll comms' n like its just a list of comm ideas im so fucking excited

wait, really?? omfg you’re gonna make me melt!!

you're my favourite writer!! each one of your fics is always so well written and interesting and i just--- omg. i have reread practically all your work i literally always go back to it <3

thank you so much, you’re so nice i hope you’re having a good day, bby!

saw dark content slander “ur sick bastards, get help” I AM BEYOND FUCKING PISSEd who the hell are y’all to tell us what to do and what to like. wtf. i’ve been seeing so much shit and it’s like “ok, and??” mind ur own fucking business, block. no one needs to hear ur opinion about it lmao. they be acting like they’re content makes them a better person. what u condone irl and what u condone in fiction is very very different. anyways thanks for listening to my rant, i’m sure u get a lot of shit from random people about dc haha

it’s frustrating, but at the end of the day it’s better just to ignore it and keep enjoying the content you want to - that’s not hurting anybody. you’re never going to change their minds and they’re not interested in that - so long as the content is appropriately tagged it shouldn’t be an issue, but i get where the frustration comes into play

and honestly compared to a lot of dark content writers i think i get off pretty lightly with hate, thank god

[cap-ironman]

Now that we have our new community mod on board, we thought it'd be a good time to update a couple of our community policies.

AGE POLICY

If you're not logged into Dreamwidth, you may have noticed that you don't need to do the extra "To continue, you must confirm that you're at least 18 years of age" clicking to see each post. We believe that while some of our events are 18+, and some of the links posted to the community go to explicit works, on the whole our community is SFW, and we want to encourage everyone to engage responsibly with the community and its posts.

By viewing our posts, you acknowledge that the cap-ironman community may contain discussions and content pertaining to adult themes and language. You must heed all warnings, and it is your responsibility to curate your viewing experience and behave accordingly.

We mark any age restrictions in our challenge rule posts, and by participating in any event marked 18+ and clicking on any work with adjacent warnings, you are stating that you're old enough to do so. If we find that you're not, please be aware that we may exclude you from participating in our events.

On the other hand, a reminder that creators are still individually responsible for posting their work, rating their work appropriately, placing warnings on their work, and minding who has access to their post.

You can read our full General Event Policies here.

DEFAULTING POLICY

Previously, if you defaulted on a challenge due to missing the posting deadline, you could either wait until your temporary ban from participating in collaborative or exchange events was lifted (one calendar year after it was put in place), or unban yourself early by completing and posting the work that you defaulted on or an equivalent which fulfilled the challenge requirements.

We have expanded the wording to make it clearer what "an equivalent work" is. We are also offering a couple of other options for defaults!

If you complete and post works which fill a request or prompt from a cap-ironman event (e.g. Community Gift prompt, Kink Meme, Bingo) which all together fulfill the defaulted event's minimum requirements, you can contact the mods to lift your ban early.

If you successfully complete a pinch hit for a cap-ironman event, your temporary ban will be lifted early. We urge you to take this option only if you are 100% certain that you are able to fulfill the pinch hit.

We encourage all participants to get in contact with the mods if they feel they can't finish an event work in time or have to default so we can address their specific situation and find an option they can work with.

You can read our full Defaulting and Participation Eligibility Policy here.

ANONYMOUS FEEDBACK FORM

Have some feedback for us that doesn't suit an email, DW comment or Tumblr message? Want to get in touch anonymously? Use our new feedback form, which is open all year round and is not event-specific.

You can find it here, in our Dreamwidth Sticky Post, and on our Tumblr and Dreamwidth sidebar menus.

TEAM MASTERPOSTS

From the 2020 Big Bang onwards, all events' Dreamwidth Team Masterpost information will be submitted to the event mods via Google Form, and the team masterposts themselves will be posted and tagged by the mods.

Please note that community members are still and always will be welcome to post and tag their own posts and works to the comm apart from this.

REMINDERS

On a general note — please remember to read our individual Event Guidelines, even if you're a cap-ironman veteran! Some of our rules do change from year to year based on feedback and trends that mods notice behind the scenes.

We are always working on making the community and our events more accessible and welcoming.

Please remember our most important rule: be excellent to everyone. Hate, personal attacks and kink shaming or ship bashing? To quote Cap,"Son, just don't." Stay classy. Homophobia, transphobia, racism, and other similar prejudices have no place in our community. This is an all-worlds, all-continuities space, and there is a huge diversity of interests and backgrounds among our event participants. It's fine to dislike things, but don't be impolite to someone because they don't share your tastes.

Thanks for reading,

Your Cap-IM Mods

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog issue 15

death awaits!

oh god the cover. I aint ready 

the cover of overlords open mouth w/rodimus floating inside or w/e,,,,the overlord mouth fixation continues i see

and of COURSE its by nick roche. of course

oh god the tension and dread in the first page, as we get overlords sinister promise to murder everyone, starting with rewind, and then seeing chromedome rush over to open the door, and knowing that 30 minutes have passed already...

that full page spread of everyone vs overlord is amazing

also I always thought that ambulon was trying to kick overlord but now that I look closer he’s actually jumping away from overlord, having just crashed one of those hover...thingys....into him...which is honestly cool as hell. also I'm never over the fact that ambulon kinda looks like he’s smiling here, just having a grand ole time as overlord tries his best to murder everyone

and chromedome just seeing this and saying ‘rewind?’ is fucking killing me thanks

PIPES NO DONT DO THIS. YOURE JUST RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND. PLEASE don't talk about how much fun you're having on your wacky space adventure oh god, that’s just asking to be murdered,

GOD AND THERE HE GOES, DRIVING TO HIS DOOM. PIPES NO

AUGHHHHHHHHHH AND THERES OVERLORD WITH HIS GIANT FOOT. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

PIIIIIPES ;_; 

his messed up goodbye thoughts are brutal...plus the final shot of him laying all busted up....god :( 

that guy seriously had some awful luck this trip. rip lil guy

BUT he sounded the alarm!!! so good for him!! that's a pretty amazing final act right there

oh my god I forgot abt this scene where rewind is like ‘so brainstorm why is my husband saying your name in his sleep :))))’ and brainstorm is like ‘haha idk its certainly not because we’re working on a secret project together, so jot that down!’ lmao brainstorm....

also dw rewind brainstorm is not fucking ur husband, just look at his evidentially extensive collection of perceptor-style microscopes...my man is microscopesexual 

I forgot abt the metabomb omfg

‘some of my favorite words are monosyllabic’ rodimus ily, himbo of my heart,

fort max :( rung :( 

oughhghghg I forgot abt the scene of tailgate making cyclonus a new horn ;_; and then cyclonus materializes menacingly bc tg dared to volunteer their room for movie night hvbfshdjkfbaskj cyclonus anti-social icon

AUGHHHH GOD THE PANEL OF RATCHET TALKING ON THE COMMS AND OVERLORD IS JUST, RIGHT BEHIND HIM, WITH HIS BIG STUPID LIPS, OH MY GOD

what the fuck, is drift a flying car??? hello??? what the hell????

seriously he’s got like, rockets and shit, what the fuck

anyways, the entire exchange b/w ratchet and drift here kills me, for multiple reasons.... ‘my faith and my sword’ lmao love it. and then ratchet refusing to leave drift and calling him his friend ;_; aughhh

rodimus w/the squad like ‘lets go gays!!!’ 

also I guess cosmos WAS on the lost light lol, totally didn't remember that, I'm guessing he left at some point to go be in the other series lmao 

I'm sorry but ‘amazing. you speak entirely in name’ is so fucking funny, but also like stfu overlord you're not allowed to be funny

MAGNUSSSSSSSS

now I'm confusing myself lmao, rodimus DID know abt overlord, didn't he??? wasn't that the whole thing???? I don't remember if he was involved w/the whole mnemosurgery plan but he at least knew that overlord was there...but we haven't been told that in-story yet so now I'm questioning that lmao

oh god I forgot that overlord almost kills magnus, jeeeeesus. good thing he’s a russian nesting doll otherwise he probably would've died fr 

also damn that's gotta be scary for everyone else, bc magnus is The Big Guy, and a renown fighter...plus drift got all fucked up...yall are in for a bad time 

tailgate gettin his panic on I see

swerve w/the meta narration lmao 

cyclonus ily sm.......

rodimus charging at overlord....ohhh my boy not your best idea

cd and rewind both saying ‘I thought you were dead!’ HHHHHHHH I'm destroyed fuck it all

rodimus (inadvertently) saving the day by saying ‘til all are one’...iconic!!

FORT MAX IS HEREEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

drift just casually chillin w/no legs

chromedome going into extreme detail about all the mnemosurgery he’s been doing on overlord for WEEKS while rewind is Right There....my dude.

this issue has a LOT of completely white backgrounds but I cant even rlly blame milne bc this seems like more drawing work than usual

oh god cd don't say ‘we’ll finish this conversation later’ at a time like this, that’s never a good idea,

rewind no don't do it :( :( :( 

that panel of cd’s arm getting cut off...AUGHHH

GODDDDDDD IM FUCKING CRYING. AUGHHHHHHHHHHH I.....

so incredibly fucked that cd does what’s best for rewind by blowing the pod up....hhhhh god 

and then that last panel of cd laying on the ground....fucking destroy me!!!!!!!!

also I love that at the beginning of the issue we see whirl with the missile launcher thing, and that’s what cd uses at the end here....good bookends. jro is really great about putting stuff in the story that just seems like innocuous filler/fun character building but turns out to ALSO be plot relevant later

HOLY SHIT I forgot about the cast page with the big red X’s thru the dead people’s profiles....jesus christ 

AUGH this issue was a rollercoaster, phew...and the emotionally devastating conclusion to this arc is still yet to come! 

I will say that it’s super interesting looking back on this, in the sense that rewind & chromedome are introduced as the first ever gay tf couple, and a few issues after we get told this explicitly, rewind is killed. this doesn't really end up being an issue representation-wise bc literally everyone is gay and there are a bunch of other significant gay characters/relationships later on, AND rewind comes back later 

but still! it’s interesting to think about how, at the time this came out, the phrase/concept ‘bury your gays’ wasn't really something that was talked about a lot (or like, it was, but not as often as nowadays, and not really under the term ‘bury your gays’ iirc), but at the time of publication this would have fallen under that trope (though rewind coming back later negates it imo). I think it would've been tough for this story to come out nowadays due to the backlash that would've occurred from rewind’s initial death (it also makes me wonder if there was any backlash when this DID come out) 

to be clear, this isn't a writing criticism - in fact, the reason this is able to work at all is because of the crazy amount of representation mtmte has. it’s like, youre able to kill off gay characters without it being ‘bury your gays’ if literally all your characters are gay by default, and there are a bunch of significant gay relationships happening - technically speaking, any death in mtmte is bury your gays lmao 

this is a completely disjointed rant but my point is like, if this issue came out in 2020 people would probably be pretty put off by rewind dying (understandably), but in the context of the series as a whole I don't consider this to be bad writing/bad representation/bury your gays 

and like, WERE people really mad about this in 2013? I am curious now, bc I would definitely feel kinda betrayed if I didn't know all the stuff that happens later 

but its pretty nice, because now I'm free to enjoy the writing and be emotionally devastated by rewinds death in a normal way, and not a ‘I'm angry at the writers for killing off one of the only gay characters’ kinda way

anyways I'm tired as hell so I'm going to bed, ill continue the emotional devastation later, phew

[johannesviii]

Top 10 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2015

This is the last list that was kind of difficult to do and where some cuts had to be made. The next four ones weren’t very good years music-wise and generally speaking.

Also there’s something that embarrasses me even more than Blue (Eiffel 65) somewhere on this top ten. Oops.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

2015 was a bit calmer, apart from the fact I moved out of the appartment and bought one instead of renting one. This is still where I’m living nowadays, it’s not big but having no landlord is a LOT less stressful even if it will take a long time to pay the loan (one time the lock broke and I couldn’t get out and the landlord refused to fix it OR pay for a new lock if I decided to call someone to fix it ; another time someone who had a spare key opened the door while I was wearing a bathrobe and was like “oh. You’re here” and I was like “...I mean..... yeah.... 'cause I live here”). I also made new friends online that year and felt less isolated.

Sidenote, my first “flat” mp3 player’s battery died today but after a quick emergency operation I was able to save the data on it. I used that mp3 player from roughly 2008 to 2013 so that’s a relief, it kinda has sentimental value and I was still using it to listen to DW audios nowadays from time to time.

As you can see in the first picture, my super old portable cd player, which still works fine, by the way, is judging this little amateur so hard right now.

So! This is the year Faithless dropped Faithless 2.0, 21 Pilots dropped Blurryface, Mylène Farmer dropped the surprisingly quite good (for this point in her career) Interstellaires, and Carly Rae Jepsen dropped E MO TION, which would have been my favorite album of the year... if Nightwish hadn’t made the absolutely jawdropping Endless Forms Most Beautiful. A symphonic metal concept album about Earth and evolution and the place of humanity in the universe?? Excuse me? Who’s read my christmas list? My favorite songs on it are Alpenglow, Shudder Before The Beautiful, the title track, Edema Ruh which has the best intro, and of course The Greatest Show On Earth, which is an incredibly ambitious, kinda bloated and quite pretentious (in a good way) song about the history of Earth, looking back from a future where mankind is extinct and concluding “we were here”, and holy shit I get emotional every time, and it’s 24 minutes long, and I still never get bored when I relisten to it. Just amazing.

As far as unelligible songs that piss me off go, it’s all Carly Rae Jepsen: I Really Like You, and especially Run Away With Me. If they had been elligible, that last one would be my #1, definitely.

Here’s some... uh, a lot of honorable mentions, actually.

Budapest (George Ezra) and Chandelier (Sia) - Still elligible, still not on the list.

Cheerleader (OMI) - I have no idea why people dislike this song.

Ex’s and Oh’s (Elle King) - This is one of these songs that would be higher on the list if I had better taste. I still like it a lot though.

FourFiveSeconds (Rihanna, Kanye West, Paul McCartney) - Ditto.

You Know You Like It (DJ Snake) - Great drop. The rest is meh.

Miracle (Julian Perretta) - The opposite of the previous one ; a fantastic song let down by its drop.

Uma Thurman (Fall Out Boy) - This song makes absolutely no sense but it’s a lot of fun nonetheless.

Lean On (Major Lazer) - Super overplayed but holy shit this is incredibly catchy. The bridge is especially great.

Want to want me (Jason Derulo) - If this guy had that kind of song in him why does he suck most of the time. What happened.

Hundred Miles (Yazz) - Nice earworm that never got annoying.

Are you with me (Lost frequencies) - Basically a less good version of Waves from the previous year. This is a compliment.

Ain’t Nobody (Felix Jaehn) - And this is the less good version of Rather Be from the previous year. This is also a compliment.

Laissez Passer (Maître Gims) - When I started to check French hit songs from years where I basically wasn’t listening to the general local radio anymore, some friends told me they were grabbing popcorn and waiting for me to start hating some specific acts. Maître Gims was one of them. To their disappointment, I love just about every non-love, non-breakup hit song he’s ever made. Oops.

Love Me Harder (Ariana Grande & The Weeknd) - It took me ages to like The Weeknd but this song helped a lot. This just sounds fantastic regardless of the content (just saying this because I have a tendency to dislike stuff like that). He isn’t even the best singer of the two on this track, wow.

Millionnaire (Soprano) - In a worse year, this would make the list without question. The lyrics aren’t that original but still very good (love the line “remplis-moi les poches d’espoir” (fill my pockets with hope)) and the melody is just beautiful.

On écrit sur les murs (Kids United) - If you recall I put the original version of this on my 1990 list because I liked the Kids United version a lot and also had nothing else to put at the 10th spot on the 1990 list. The fact that I don’t even have enough space for the better version on this list says a lot about how abysmal 1990 was, music-wise.

And now, the actual list!

10 - Centuries (Fall Out Boy)

US: #43 / FR: Not on the list

Why are these guys still on my lists.

No, seriously. Why. This is yet another song that would be better if it was faster. And the sample is badly used. So I have no idea why it works. One of these days I’ll have to reevaluate Fall Out Boy’s entire discography, take a good look at myself, and admit I possibly like this band and that I’ve been lying to myself for like 15 years... but today is not that day.

9 - Sapés Comme Jamais (Maître Gims)

US: Not on the list / FR: #10

Told you I liked Maître Gims!

Listen. It’s not my place to comment on the ethics of the whole La Sape movement (which can be summarised as “modern black dandies trying to get the most expensive & beautiful clothes possible”) but you have to admit it’s super cool to have a more energetic and fun version of Suit And Tie. God, that beat. And it’s a ton of fun to sing along with the chorus! And it’s such a convincing song when it’s combined with the music video, you kinda want to look as cool and confident as these guys.

Also quick shoutout to the Sapeuses. Absolute legends & queens, every last one of them.

8 - Style (Taylor Swift)

US: #29 / FR: Not on the list

That year my s.o went to a party I didn’t want to go to and came back home completely drunk & way too late, crashed on the couch and started to ramble about how “Style” by Taylor Swift had a better sound mixing than the entirety of Epica’s latest album at the time and how amazing it was. For like half an hour.

I completely agree, just to clarify.

7 - Cool For The Summer (Demi Lovato)

US: #53 / FR: Not on the list

In what is possibly the least controversial opinion on this entire list: I love Cool For The Summer, the melody is great, the lyrics are good, the singing is the best, and you all know that and you all love this song, so yeah. Moving on to-

Oh god here comes #6. Oh shit. Oh no.

Can’t we just skip it and pretend-

6 - Animals (Maroon 5)

US: #46 / FR: Not on the list

So. I.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuh.

How can I justify this bullshit.

The truth is: I can’t. Not really. I’m not even entirely sure what happened here. I hate this band and have always hated them, from the start. The lyrics are painfully stupid. The singing is as atrocious as ever. The “AWOOOOO” bit on the bridge is absolutely ridiculous. None of Levine’s “oh look at me I’m so dangerous” act remotely works. There isn’t a single thing I find competent here apart from the melody. I mean it. I’m not saying any of this to look cool. If I wanted to look cool, this certainly wouldn’t be on the list.

But you know what, the sheer incompetence on display here may be exactly why I like it. If it was a credible serial killer song written like an upbeat pop song, it would be disturbing and unlistenable. But the way it’s made, it simply sounds stupid, so you keep imagining some sort of inoffensive nerd pretending he’s a horrible monster (and failing) whenever you hear it. And that, I think, is what pushes it squarely into the “so bad it’s f█cking fantastic” territory, where it joins Butterfly from my 2001 list.

That sounds about right.

5 - Adventure of a Lifetime (Coldplay)

US: Not on the list / FR: #29

I haven’t mentioned A Head Full of Dreams in that year’s albums, because it came out at the very end of 2015 so I mostly consider it to be a 2016 album. It’s not as good as Mylo Xyloto, and not as consistant as Ghost Stories, but it contains some real gems. Adventure of a Lifetime isn’t nearly my favorite song on it, and I still put it super high here. I love the lyrics in particular (”under this pressure, under this weight, we are diamonds taking shape” oh damn) but the song itself just makes you want to move. I literally can’t listen to it without at least moving my head in rhythm a little bit. It’s nearly as colorful as the album cover. And it’s a joy to sing along the “woooohooooo”s!

4 - Stolen Car (Mylène Farmer & Sting)

US: Not on the list / FR: #61

This is Stolen Car (Take Me Dancing), from Sting (2004), rewritten as a half English half French duet where it’s unclear if the female singer is the imaginary lover or the car in the story. You might want to re-read that sentence.

What did I say on a previous list? Ah yes, “I see a duet between two singers I like and I die instantly”. This is also the last time Mylène Farmer is going to appear on one of my lists. I could say “self care”, but I genuinely don’t like any of her more recent hits, at all. Whatever. She’s been on these lists since the very first one (1988) anyway.

It’s been a wild ride, to say the least.

3 - Shut Up And Dance (Walk the Moon)

US: #6 / FR: Not on the list

And for the second least controversial opinion on this list: despite the massive overplay, I never EVER got tired of this, it’s colorful, energetic, super fun, and it’s still on my mp3 player to this day. Just a fantastic song. And a great band! I wish One Foot had been elligible for a future list, it’s super good. Aw.

2 - Ego (Willy Williams)

US: Not on the list / FR: #69

This is a song about a guy who imagines himself as this super cool elegant dude, but when he looks at himself in the mirror he hates everything he’s seeing.

I know this isn’t supposed to be a song about gender dysphoria but my god is this shit relatable.

To make things even better, it’s served by creepy music box sounds ala The Birthday Massacre and by an untouchable, strange beat. It’s a dark, weird song, but it’s all kinds of wonderful and catchy as hell, and apparently I’m not the only one to think that considering the mindboggling number of views on the youtube music video. Watch it if you haven’t seen it, it’s hypnotic and makes the song even better.

I only discovered this song last year but I’ve listened to it so much since then I really debated if this should be at the #1 spot. It’s just... so horribly relatable.

But you know what’s even more relatable?

Being broke and sad and still trying to have the time of your life.

1 - Downtown (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis)

US: #84 / FR: Not on the list

Some people call this Thriftshop 2.0 but I think it’s even better than Thriftshop, which was, if you recall one of my previous lists, already pretty damn good in my opinion.

As you probably already know, it’s a song about a guy buying a moped and bragging about him and his friends, and their mopeds, and how cool they look when they ride downtown on their mopeds. I never owned a moped in my life. But I have a super small & shitty car which I love very much and so it’s very relatable. Also I’ve never written the word ‘moped’ so often in a single paragraph before in my life.

I love every single person who sings on this track. I love the music video. I’ve been trying to match the flow of the second verse ever since it came out and I still can’t do it with my shitty accent. It’s full of weird and corny lines, but that’s also why I love it so much. The dialogue at the beginning! “Dope, my crew is ill, and all we need is two good wheels”! “Head into the dealership and drop a stack and cop a Kawasaki, I'm stunting on everybody, hella raw, pass the wasabi”! “My seat is leather, alright, I'm lying, it's pleather / But girl, we could still ride together / You don't need an Uber, you don't need a cab / F█ck a bus pass, you got a moped man”!! “Cut the bullshit / Get off my mullet / Stone washed, so raw / Moped like a bullet - NYAOOOOOO”!! “Running around the whole town / Neighbors yelling at me like, "You need to slow down." / Going thirty-eight, Dan, chill the f█ck out / Mow your damn lawn and sit the hell down”!!! Oh shit, I basically quoted one third of the song. I just. Ugh. I love it so much, okay?

Cringe culture is dead and we peed on its grave. We spend enough time in our lives feeling miserable. Like what you like. Even if it’s super ridiculous. No: especially if it’s super ridiculous. Live a little, damn it.

Next up: The Year Everything Went Wrong Except Pop Music

[laylainalaska]

More DW-related rambling

It’s also worth pointing out that for people coming from Tumblr, or people new to DW in general, the process of finding people to talk to on DW is actually fairly opaque and difficult. (I still find it hard to find people in new fandoms to talk to over there, and I’ve been on there since FOREVER. That’s one of the main reasons why I’m on Tumblr, actually! Because I can FIND PEOPLE when I get into something new!) 

This is one of the big drawbacks to DW: it runs mostly on word of mouth and networking. You can’t search/follow tags the way you can on Tumblr (well, it sort of has that function, but it doesn’t really work the same). FWIW, making new friends on Tumblr is equally opaque and weird for DW people, so it’s a mutual incomprehension. XD

Back in the heyday of fandom on LJ, it wasn’t nearly that hard because LJ had hub sites called communities, where everyone met and hung out. (If you hear Fandom Olds talking about comms, that’s what they mean.) DW still has this, but they aren’t nearly as active - although it’s always possible that they could be again. You just need a certain critical mass of users to make them work. Before there was Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook with dashboards and walls, there were LJ comms where you had a constant stream of new content to follow. (That, and your reading list. But comms were one of the main ways you found new people to follow in the first place.)

There ARE still comms on DW. A couple of the more active ones I know of include:

Fan_flashworks. They post a new prompt every 10 days and you have to post your fills in the comm for the duration of the posting period.

Fandom Stocking. Currently taking signups!

There are loads more. Perhaps people could reblog and suggest some?

The OTHER way people on LJ (and later on DW) found each other was through friending memes. These were (and still are) done as comments to an entry. You post your info so other people can find you, and you look through the comments to find other people who are into some of the same things you’re into. There’s one currently going on right now: you can find it here if you’d like to check it out and see how they work.

But otherwise, like ... if you sign up for a DW blog and then it just gathers cobwebs because you can’t find people to talk to, I swear it’s not that you’re doing something wrong. It IS hard, and it was easier back in the old days when there were more people over there and a lot of active comms, but it’s always been a little bit difficult and to be honest I’m not entirely sure how we did it, any more than I’m sure how I’ve managed to find people to talk to on Tumblr. So I don’t want to try to sell DW as a magic bullet for fandom interaction, especially for introverts, which is like ... 90% of us, I think. XD

DW is also more geared towards talking to people/making friends/making social connections than Tumblr is. Which could be a feature or a bug depending on what YOU’RE there for. Given that we (fandom) are mostly introverts, DW gives you a lot more controls for keeping unwanted people out of your posts than Tumblr does. You can very easily lock posts down so only people you’ve given access can see them. You can turn comments off completely, hide them (or just hide certain comments), and block people. So basically you can just use your DW for talking mainly to yourself, talking to a few select people, whatever.

But if you actually do want to make new friends, it’s worth noting that most people on DW also want to make friends (I think at this point, most of the truly antisocial have either fled for other platforms or gone into heavy lurk mode), so if you do too, and you post some things, and find some people to talk to and comment on their posts - there is, I guess, a shared expectation that “we’re all on this site to talk about fandom stuff” so that’s a big help with finding people to talk to. You can avoid this pretty easily by just lurking (I lurk a lot, tbh) but if you want to make friends, commenting on people’s posts and actively trying to start discussions on your own DW can work out pretty well. You DO have to work on it, but then, you do on Tumblr too.

[dcubang]

DCU Bang 2019 Announcements

Hello everyone! Here is the plan for this year’s DCU Bang! There are going to be some pretty big changes, namely a shorter writing period, so that the Bang ends by the end of October. Last year I realized that the posting period ran into some commitments I need to take care of in November, so I have adjusted things so that I can give you guys the best experience I can and be as present as possible!

To help ease the flow of things, CrabbyMaiden has joined me as a mod!

There are also going to be a lot of guideline changes, which I will have posted before sign-ups open on the 10th! Things are also going to largely run through Archive of Our Own this year, so if you do not have an account yet, please get one! I have some invite codes that I will hand out for emergencies only. It can sometimes take a week to get an Ao3 invite through their queue, the so the sooner you request, the sooner you get in!

At this time, I am not requiring artists/fanworkers to post on Ao3, but their authors will need to link to the accompanying fanworks in their story in someway. The plan is to have works posted to the DCU Bang Ao3 collection, and then I will do weekly roundups of the posted works on the DW/LJ comms and more details about this will come when I have finalized things.

I’m also in the process of adding a DCU Bang Twitter, so bear with me while I get that set up (and figure out how to use Twitter. xD) Due to Tumblr banning NSFW content, I am unsure what to do at this time in regards to that, but for the time being, announcements will still be on the Tumblr account. For those of you that draw NSFW works, I hope you have found a new platform to use!

I really appreciate all the feedback I received after the last Bang, and it has really helped me to know what direction to go! If you have any questions or concerns, this post has anonymous commenting turned on, and as always, feel free to contact me via email, PM on DreamWidth/LiveJournal, or DM me on Discord!

(The below schedule is subject to change slightly before sign-ups open!!!)

April 10th - All signups open April 30th - 10k Signups Close May 15th - 5k Sign-ups Close (Artist Signups still open) June 1st - 1st checkin June 23rd-July 1st - Accepting rough drafts (60% done) July 1st - 2nd checkin July 2nd - Story Previews July 3rd - Story claims begin July 5th - Story Claims close August 1st - Mandatory checkin August 15th - Date claiming September 1st - Posting Starts September 30th - Posting ends October 1st - Amnesty posting Begins October 15th - Amnesty Posting Ends October 31st - Wrap up

[bedlamsbard]

I always like to post fic on my birthday, but I don't have anything new ready to go this year so I thought I would post a sequence that was written as part of the flashbacks for On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone. This was meant to directly follow the flashbacks in Backbone 17, but I ended up not using them because I thought they weakened the present-day narrative. I was going to use them for Down in the Devil's Lair, the sequel to Backbone, but I don't think they're going to work there either, and it's a sequence I've been asked about posting a lot. This is Kanan's first Hunt -- the occasion on which he earned his name. About 5K below the break. (Also cross-posted to DW.)

*

From above, the savannah below looked like a rippling purple sea. It was such a striking difference from Mustafar that for a moment all Kanan could do was stare at it, shocked beyond words at the way the wind felt on his bare skin, at the cool, clean air and the waves of purple grasses stretching out into the distance. He had been at the Crucible so long that he had nearly forgotten that places like this existed.

As the gunship slowed to a hover, the other three Inquisitors stepped up beside him to judge their height and current position. Kanan didn’t look at any of them, intimately aware of the Hunter’s presence on his left and Patience on his right – one of her droids clicking quiet protest before she closed the face plates of her helmet and took a flying leap out of the gunship. The wind blew away the sound of its shriek. Kanan didn’t want to be prompted and he didn’t want to be pushed out of the gunship by the Hunter, which he suspected would happen if he hesitated, so he backed up a few steps and then followed Patience out, spreading his arms and legs to slow his initial descent as he fell. The wind streamed past him, raising goosebumps on the bare skin of his shaved head and flowing past the black mask he was wearing, which covered the lower half of his face. The Hunter hadn’t been joking about having him muzzled. Kanan kept his eyes open despite the pressure of the wind, layering the Force over them as protection. He tucked himself into a showy roll as the ground rose up towards him, bracing himself with an outstretched hand and the Force as he hit the ground and came up on his feet, one hand dropping to his lightsaber before he saw that there was no one else around besides Patience. A moment later the Hunter landed a few feet away, then the Hangman, the fourth Inquisitor with them. Kanan glanced up to see the gunship angling away, leaving them alone in the savannah. One of Patience’s droids – presumably the one that had been shrieking – had wrapped itself around her neck and shoulders, clutching desperately at her. The other two were already moving purposefully away, red lights flashing on their domes. “She isn’t here,” the Hangman said. He was some species that Kanan didn’t recognize, a big male with rocky gray skin and a disapproving expression. He had spent the journey here looking at Kanan like he was thinking about throwing him out of the nearest airlock, though the Hunter’s presence had kept him from doing anything of the sort. “Obviously,” Patience said, reaching up to stroke a soothing finger down the back of the droid clutching at her. She pried it loose with some difficulty, holding it between her hands and murmuring to it like a pet. “She hides herself in the Force like a coward.” The Hunter flicked a glance at the Hangman and laid a hand on the back of Kanan’s neck. “Can you find our renegade, my Hound?” The Hangman and Patience both turned their heads at this. “What good is your Jedi supposed to be, Hunter?” the Hangman sneered. “Do you believe he will have any more luck finding the traitor?” The Hunter turned an unimpressed look on him. “The Jedi manipulate the Living Force as we cannot. He will be able to sense the renegade no matter what tricks the Fisher uses.” He stroked a proprietary finger along the line of Kanan’s throat. “Won’t you?” Kanan bit his lip, his breath rasping against the inside of the mask. It was the first time anyone had used the rogue Inquisitor’s nickname. The Hunter loosed his grip enough that Kanan could sink down to his knees in front of him, his vision of Patience and the Hangman suddenly obscured by the tall purple grasses. He shut his eyes, forcing himself to filter out the feel of the Hunter’s hand on his neck, the soft whirring of Patience’s droid, the sound of the wind in the grasses, the distant cry of some bird – It left him with the Hunter’s rough affection, the Hangman’s disapproval, and Patience’s focus on her upset droid. Kanan forced them all aside, letting his senses spread out. There were dozens of Inquisitors on the planet at the moment; Kanan found and identified all of the ones he remembered from the Crucible, even if he hadn’t seen them as anything other than a face in the crowd. This was an inhabited planet, though not a heavily populated one; Kanan was vaguely aware of each population center, most of which were unaware of the predator in their midst. Most of them. Not all of them. He tilted his head a little to one side, his eyes still closed, and licked his lips again. He could feel the tremor in the Force, like a rock thrown into a still pool – the ripples still radiating outwards. Kanan followed them back to their source, the shadow growing the closer he got to it. The backlash knocked him out of his trance. The Hunter caught him as he jerked to his feet, gasping. Kanan was in too much shock to protest or pull away and let the Hunter take his full weight instead, regaining his footing after a moment. He tried to wipe a hand over his mouth, but his gloved fingers brushed against the smooth plasteel of the mask instead and Kanan stopped, his fists clenching and unclenching. He looked up to find both Patience and the Hangman staring at him. “She killed them,” he mumbled, the words lost in the mask. The Hunter was close enough that he might have heard, but the other two Inquisitors were too far away. Kanan dropped his head, now more aware than ever of the Hunter’s grip on his neck, and waited for the Hunter to speak before he said anything else. “Well?” the Hangman said eventually, sounding irritated. “Is your new pet actually any use, Hunter?” The Hunter flicked an irritated glance at him, then bent his lips against Kanan’s ear. “Where is she?” Kanan pointed. He had to raise his voice and enunciate each word for his voice to be heard through the mask over it, and what came out didn’t sound like his voice at all, harsh and alien to his ears. “She killed everyone in the village.” “The child?” Patience asked. Kanan hadn’t known there was a child involved, since his briefing on this op had been limited to “an Inquisitor has stopped responding to comms and all signs suggest that she’s snapped and gone insane.” “Everyone in a thirty kilometer radius is dead except her.” The Hunter gave Kanan another of those fond little shakes, making Kanan clench his teeth. “Good,” he said. “Let’s go kill her.” They weren’t so far from the remains of the village that the distance couldn’t be covered on foot, so the four of them loped easily through the high grasses, reaching the outskirts of the settlement by the time that the huge orange sun began to sink below the horizon. There they stopped, Patience sending her droids ahead to scout out the village. Kanan crouched amidst the grasses, breathing hard as he scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it between his fingers. For all that everything around the village was tainted by the dark side – he could feel the murders of the residents resonating through the Force – it still felt cleaner than Mustafar did, unpolluted by the vergence there. Even though he couldn’t smell anything clearly through the mask, he could feel it in the Force: clean air, clean land, happy people. It had been a good place to live. Had been. Why was an Inquisitor sent here? Most of what Kanan knew about the duties of the Inquisition had to do with hunting Jedi and the members of other Force traditions, though there seemed to be a fair amount that had to do with internal policing of the Empire. But he couldn’t sense another Force-user here; the planet wasn’t even important enough to have an Imperial complex, just an outpost in the only major city. So why send an Inquisitor? He started to voice the question, then thought better of it, wiping the dirt off his fingers and glancing up to find the three Inquisitors studiously ignoring each other. Kanan sat back on his heels, enjoying the feel of the setting sun on his face and bare head; he had no idea when the next time he would be allowed out of the Crucible would be, and chances were that it wouldn’t be anywhere like this. Not somewhere that felt so…alive, even amidst the death that had occurred in the village. The rogue Inquisitor, the Fisher, had only killed its inhabitants. Kanan could still sense the livestock and pets that lived in the village, some of them hungry after long hours without food, others miserable because they hadn’t yet been milked. A few herd-beasts had gotten loose of their pen and into their owner’s feed store; Kanan could sense their satisfaction in the Force as they glutted themselves on grain. He hadn’t been this open to the Force since the Republic had still stood, not somewhere…normal. The Crucible was the Crucible, but this was a place where people lived, a place where neither the dark side nor the light held sway. The murder that had been done here was only a faint shadow on the surface of the Force: in time, it would pass, and life would recommence as it had been before. A tragedy, yes, but not the kind that would reverberate outwards on the galaxy the way some would. Not like the Force-echo on Mustafar, whatever it really was; not like the slaughter of the Jedi, which Kanan could still taste if he meditated too deeply, even in the depths of the Crucible. He froze as a familiar hand settled on the back of his neck. “Enjoying yourself?” the Hunter said, leaning down so that his breath tickled Kanan’s ear. Kanan bit his lip on a response. He didn’t protest as the Hunter dragged him back up to his feet, Patience and the Hangman only flicking disinterested glances in their direction. “What do you feel, Jedi?” the Hunter asked. Kanan squeezed his eyes shut, his breath rasping against the inside of his mask, and shook his head. He hadn’t been trying to find the Fisher. He had just been…being, forgetting for a few minutes that he was an Inquisitor and an abomination and the Hunter’s property. They both looked over as Patience’s comlink suddenly beeped. She raised her wrist, her shoulders tightening as one of her droids reported in. “What is it?” the Hangman demanded. “They are dead,” Patience said. The face plates of her helmet slid back, revealing her scowl. “The Leviathan, the Songmaker, and the trainees they brought with them. They encountered the Fisher and she destroyed them.” “You did not sense this?” the Hangman said, turning on Kanan. “Hound,” he added, his lip curling. Kanan spat the words, unsure if they would be discernible through the mask. “I wasn’t looking.” “Then what use are you?” said the Hangman. He turned away dismissively, reaching back over his shoulder for his lightsaber. “Let us go and kill that traitor.” “Then you will die like the others,” Patience said. “We gain nothing by waiting,” the Hangman said, and strode off in the direction of the village without another word. Patience shook her head in disbelief. “I’m not hauling his body back to Mustafar,” she said, following him. Kanan expected the Hunter to do the same, but instead the Pau’an remained still, his hand tightening on Kanan’s neck until he suddenly said, “Go fetch.” He released him with a shove that made Kanan stumble forward, catching himself on the ground as he fell. He pushed himself upright, looking back over his shoulder at the Hunter. The Inquisitor just smiled. “Bring me her head, my Hound.” * Kanan found the first body when he was barely five steps inside the village walls. They weren’t much to speak of – a man-height barricade of thickly woven grasses that looked like it wouldn’t have kept out a particularly lazy nerf. But Kanan had felt electricity sparking through them before he had vaulted them; the woven grasses concealed a security system that would have given most intruders a painful surprise. It didn’t do more than sting the palm of his hand. He landed in a roll and came up in a crouch, his hand falling to his lightsaber as he looked around. When nothing moved, he straightened upright, moving through the vegetable garden he had landed in. There was a dead man just outside the gate. Kanan pushed it open as gently as he could, trying not to disturb the body, and squeezed through the narrow opening to crouch down beside the corpse. He was a Feeorin, a young man not much older than Kanan, and there was a single burned-looking cut down his torso that had clearly been made by a lightsaber. Kanan reached out to close his open eyes and then stood again. He found more bodies the further he ventured into the village, passing pens of hungry animals and others that were roaming free – a tooka that came up to his feet as he pushed through an open door to find a mother and two children slaughtered at their dinner table, an anooba lying in front of a nerf-pen that growled at him. If he had been ten years younger, he would have gone to feed the animals, but as it was he merely gripped the hilt of his lightsaber and kept walking. The Fisher was here, he knew. He could feel her, though she had hidden herself within the Living Force, layering her presence amidst that of the confused animals and the dead here, and it made it difficult for Kanan to narrow down her exact location. But she was here. He paused as he saw another pair of bodies in the street ahead of him, these ones not matching the settlers he had seen before. He slowed his pace as he approached them, his hand on his lightsaber, then let it drop as he got close enough to recognize the Imperial symbols on their black armor even in the twilight gloom. The trainee he knew, a Togruta male whom Kanan had fought with in the Crucible before; he had been bisected and his legs lay a little apart from his torso. The other Inquisitor, a Trandoshan, was a stranger, but he knew from what Patience had said that he had to be either the Leviathan or the Songmaker. Their lightsabers lay on the ground beside them, one cut clearly in half but the other intact. Kanan couldn’t see a wound on the Trandoshan, but even though he couldn’t feel a spark of life in him he reached out to feel for a pulse anyway, his fingers resting against scales hours cool. “You,” said a female voice from behind and above him, “I don’t know.” Kanan rose slowly to his feet and turned around, looking up to see a black-clad human-looking woman standing on the roof of the nearest building, her arms crossed over her chest. The white Imperial cogs on her pauldrons caught the moonlight, as did the black metal hilt of the lightsaber on her hip. “You’re the Fisher,” he said, but he had spoken too softly and the mask made the words inaudible. She leapt down from the building and landed in the street in front of him; from here he could see that the lower half of her face was covered by some kind of cloth, leaving only her eyes and a strip of dark skin visible. “Is the Whip just sending trainees after me now? Where’s your master, apprentice?” Kanan stiffened. “My master’s dead,” he said, this time managing to make the words clear enough to be audible despite the mask. “Your masters killed her.” The Fisher hesitated for an instant, her eyes narrowing, before she said, “I can feel the Hunter on you. He’s been looking for a pet for a long time now. I’m sorry to deprive him of one.” “I’m no one’s pet,” Kanan said, pulling his lightsaber off his belt. Her gaze flicked to the hilt before he ignited the blade, bringing it up in front of him in a salute before he shifted to the opening stance of Form Five. “And no one else is dying today.” “Now that,” said the Fisher, igniting both blades of her own lightsaber, “hardly sounds like something an Inquisitor would say.” “I’m full of surprises,” Kanan said, watching her eyes, not her blade. He shifted his position, his steps soft on the packed earth of the street, and saw her gaze flicker as she tracked the movement. “Did they name you yet, apprentice?” she said. “Do you even remember the name you had before?” “I remember,” Kanan said. “Do you?” “Why do you think I went mad?” “I don’t know,” Kanan said. “Why does anyone kill this many innocent beings? They never did anything to harm you.” “They’re better off where they are now. This galaxy isn’t kind to innocent beings.” “This galaxy’s not kind to anyone,” Kanan said. He licked his lips, glad for a fleeting moment that she couldn’t see the nervous gesture. “Did they name you?” she said again. “Did you earn your name?” “What does it matter to you?” Kanan snapped, irritated, and in his moment of distraction she attacked. He swung his lightsaber up to parry the blow, darting under her outswept blade as she disengaged and drew back, her lightsaber behind her. Kanan flipped his hilt around into a reverse grip, his free hand clenching into an empty fist. For a fleeting moment he wished for his blaster, but that wouldn’t do him any good against an Inquisitor. It would be a hell of a surprise, though. The Fisher’s head went slightly to one side in something that might have been surprise, then she flung her free hand up. The Force sent Kanan flying backwards, crashing into the wall of the nearest house. He dropped his lightsaber as he hit the floor in a wild tumble, but he was already reaching for it when the Inquisitor’s foot took him in the jaw and everything went black. * Kanan came to an indeterminate amount of time later, blinking blearily until the world swam into focus. He was still alive. Somehow he hadn’t expected that. When he put a hand down to push himself upright, he found that he wasn’t bound either, his fingers pressing against coarse-grained wood – he was in one of the houses in the settlement. Grimacing, Kanan pulled himself into a sitting position, looking around for his lightsaber and spotting it on a table on the opposite side of the room. The Fisher was perched beside it, her legs folded in front of her as she watched him. There was a lamp on the table beside her, illuminating the room with soft yellow light. Kanan looked at it, at his lightsaber, at her lightsaber sitting on the table next to the light, and said, “What do you –” The words came out clearly, and he was so startled that he clasped a hand to his mouth. The Fisher held up his mask so that he could see it, then put it down beside his lightsaber. She hopped down off the table and paced towards him, reaching up to pull down the scarf wrapped around her face. “Hello, Caleb Dume,” she said. Kanan stared at her. “Tai?” Tai Uzuma crouched down in front of him, resting her hands on her thighs. “I thought you were dead, out there with that jinx and her clones, until I saw your name on the list the Crucible keeps. But they caught you too, Dume. I’m just surprised you survived this long.” “Yeah, you thought I’d be killed in my first battle,” Kanan said automatically. “You were in the Temple. Why aren’t you dead?” He had been so certain that everyone in the Jedi Temple had died, from younglings in the crèche to the Temple Guards that renounced even their own souls to the defense of the Order. Everyone said that every Jedi in the Temple had died that day; Kanan had never heard of a survivor. And he had been the only member of his cohort chosen as a padawan. Tai and the other member of their cohort, Sammo Quid, had both been in the Temple when Darth Vader and his clone troopers had come for them. “We ran,” Tai said. “There are tunnels in the lower levels that lead out into the city, do you remember? Sammo and I were down there exploring them when it started. There was nothing we could have done,” she added, with the air of something rote. “We had to run.” “What happened to him?” “He went back to check on the Temple, walked straight into a clone trap.” Her lip curled. “He was the lucky one.” It was on the tip of Kanan’s tongue to ask how she had ended up in the Inquisition, but she would probably turn the question around on him, and Jedi or not, he didn’t want her to know about Hera. Not if there was any chance that he wouldn’t be walking out of this room alive. In the Temple they taught that there was nothing more dangerous than a fallen Jedi, and this close to her Kanan could taste the dark side in the Force, the way she had lost herself in it. He had seen what was left of the villagers. He couldn’t chance turning her loose on Hera. If Tai noticed his hesitation, she didn’t show it. “I threw out my lightsaber in the nearest trash disposal,” she said. “I couldn’t get off Coruscant, though. Do you have any idea what it was like on Coruscant then?” “The closest I ever got to Coruscant was the airspace, before I got Master Kenobi’s message,” Kanan said. “I never made planetfall.” “Hmm. Lucky. How did you survive, Dume?” “My master,” Kanan said. Tai looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. She straightened back up, pacing in front of him. Kanan watched her, rubbing at his jaw for the first time in what felt like days, even though he knew that it truly hadn’t been that long. She turned back to him so suddenly that he flinched. “So they sent a Jedi to hunt a Jedi,” she said. “You know it’s a test, don’t you?” “Wouldn’t be the first time this week,” Kanan said. “And I’m not a Jedi, not anymore. No more than you are.” The corner of her lip curled. “Tell that to the Force.” She hopped back up onto the table, kicking her heels. “We’ll always be Jedi to it, Caleb Dume, to the Force and our masters. No matter how much we pervert ourselves for their amusement, they’ll never see us as anything but Jedi.” “They told me all the Jedi were dead,” Kanan said. “That all the others before me had died.” “That’s true,” Tai observed. “From a certain point of view. I wouldn’t really call this living.” Kanan blinked slowly. “How many of us are there?” “A few,” Tai said. “Most of the others really are dead.” She tapped the side of her head. “What we are, what they made us, no one was ever meant to be. You can’t be the Force made flesh and an Inquisitor and stay sane. I didn’t.” She grinned at him. “You won’t either.” Kanan glanced down. “Why kill the villagers?” She shrugged. “Because I could. Still asking questions, Dume.” She picked up the mask and wagged it at him. “The Hunter doesn’t like that, does he?” He looked aside, hearing the soft click as she dropped it back onto the table. “Better that I kill them than anyone else,” Tai said. “Because they would die. Them and the child I was sent here for, sooner or later.” “Child?” “Hasn’t your new master taught you anything?” Tai grinned without humor. “In another life that little boy might have been a Jedi. Now he’ll never be anything – not the weapon of the light or the dark. He’s free in the Force now, along with all his people.” “Tai, that was murder.” She kicked her heels again, leaning forward as she said, “Murder’s what we do now, Dume. Murder is what we are. Haven’t they taught you that yet?” Kanan gritted his teeth and looked away. There was a small round window set high near the ceiling, and through it he saw the gleaming red eye of one of Patience’s parrot droids. He looked back at Tai, swallowing, and said, “What are you going to do to me?” “What we are we cannot be,” she said, slipping down off the table and stepping over to him. “The Force won’t allow it.” Kanan pushed slowly to his feet; feeling the ache in his body from everything he had been doing today. He was taller than Tai now, he saw. The last time he had seen her, less than a month before Order 66, he hadn’t been. “You’re going to kill me,” he said. “We’re both dead already, Caleb,” Tai said. “You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet. Believe me, this will be better.” She held out her hand for her lightsaber, but as it came flying across the room to her Kanan was already moving, throwing himself sideways into a roll and grabbing for the Force. Tai was swept backwards and Kanan grabbed for his own lightsaber, the hilt slapping into his hand and the blade igniting even as Tai launched herself at him. Her blade glanced off his and she flipped over his head, already spinning as she landed to thrust up at him. Kanan parried the blow, moving backwards as she straightened up, forcing her attack, their blades a red blur between them. “Tai, this isn’t right!” he said. “Tai –” “Tai Uzuma is dead, Caleb Dume,” she spat, rearing back as Kanan dodged out of her way and hooked a chair with his foot to knock into her path. She swept it aside with a slash of her blade and moved forward, circling to cut Kanan off from the door. Kanan backed up, keeping his blade in front of him. “What are you trying to do, kid? You think your master will lift a finger to save you?” “He’s not my master,” Kanan said, sweeping aside another stroke of her blade, wary of the place the unignited second blade on her ‘saber could erupt at any moment. “Tai, listen to me, we can –” “What? We can what?” A shift in the Force sent Kanan stumbling backwards, straight into the wall. Tai was there in a second; he barely got his lightsaber up in time to keep her off him, the red blades sparking between them as she pressed forward. “There’s no we, Dume. The Empire saw to that. There’s just you and me. And what you and I are cannot be.” “Tai –” He shoved forward with his greater strength and forced her backwards, slamming a kick into her stomach as soon as he had the space to do so. She turned a little so that it caught her across the ribs, stumbling aside. Kanan followed it up by slamming the hilt of his lightsaber into her wrist, making her drop her own lightsaber. He kicked it aside the moment it hit the floor, though that couldn’t keep it away from her for long. Her gaze flicked to it, then back at him. She rubbed her hand over her wrist, watching him with yellowed eyes. Kanan felt the shift in the Force, looking at the door even before it started to slide open. He wasn’t looking at Tai as she leapt suddenly at him, his lightsaber coming up automatically. It went cleanly through her chest and out her back as Kanan yelled in pure shock. Tai’s mouth had gone wide, but all the amber leached out of her eyes as Kanan deactivated his ‘saber and caught her, lowering her to the floor. “Tai, no, Tai –” She lifted her hand to her wound with what seemed like great effort, her breath rasping in the air. Distantly, Kanan was aware of footsteps, of more presences in the room, but he didn’t look to see who it was. Tai looked at the blood on her fingers, then touched his cheek gently. “Thank you, Caleb,” she breathed. “Thank you –” Her hand fell back against the floor as her body went limp, her eyes staring empty at nothing. Kanan bent his head to her chest, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and laid her down as gently as he could despite the way the Force was screaming in his head. I killed a Jedi. I killed a Jedi – When he lifted his hands from her, they were shaking. I killed a Jedi, I killed Tai, I killed another Jedi – He was barely aware of the steps that crossed the room to him, not until he felt the Hunter’s hand on the back of his neck. When he raised his head, it was to see Barriss standing in the doorway, watching them with something unreadable in her eyes. “Now,” said the Hunter, sounding pleased, “you’ve earned your name, my Hound.”