#nightmare hour work week

[commandsir]

i am free.

[deckofmanymore]

"In truth, you were a cannibal long before the Helcaraxë."

My attempt at drawing a Fingolfin inspired by @antlered-vixen 's amazing fic Light Splintered and Sewn - quote is from chapter 29, in which shit really hits the fan my fucking god

[raineandsky]

#137

tw: mentions of death

“You might consider yourself lucky, [Hero],” the supervillain snaps coolly, “being here, still alive. You are only alive because I let you—because you are much more fun to slowly squeeze the life from, until you’re begging me to end it all, and we will have plenty of time for that.”

With one last cold glare and a swish of his coat, the supervillain leaves the hero in the dungeon. The hero would be inclined to call it a prison, or even a cage, but the walls are damp and there’s bloodied chains sitting in one corner, so in their mind this counts very much as a dungeon.

They settle against the cool stone as comfortably as they can manage, which frankly isn’t comfortable at all. They close their eyes, a sigh escaping their lips. They’re prepared to face whatever agonies are doubtlessly ready for them ahead. Waiting for said agonies will be boring, that’s all.

“You too, huh?”

The hero opens their eyes to glance across the dungeon, to the other side of the darkness. They can only just make out the outline of a figure sulking in the other corner, but they recognise the voice all the same.

“Fancy seeing you here,” the hero says with a short laugh. “What did you do?”

The villain practically growls. “I’m not entertaining you.”

“It’s not entertainment; I’m just curious.”

There’s a second of silence, and the hero thinks they might get an answer before the villain simply says, “You first.”

“Fucked up.” The hero shrugs, though they can’t tell if the villain can see it or not. “Did something not particularly heroic.”

The villain shifts a little, chains clanking together with the movement. “Huh.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I figured it must be something bad.” The villain makes a noise that might be a laugh or a scoff. “[Supervillain] doesn’t get super serious with just anyone.”

“Must’ve been pretty serious for you to end up down here, then,” the hero comments with a huff.

The villain raises an hand to their face, and the hero gets a glimpse of the line of chain trailing from their wrist.

“Oh, it’s whatever. I also fucked up. Did something…” The villain grapples for a word awkwardly. “Not villainous.”

The hero barks a laugh that seems to make the villain jump, if the sudden clank of metal is anything to go by, but they can’t help it. A newfound anti-hero and a good-hearted villain sharing a supervillain’s dungeon. What a pair they make.

“You’ve peaked my curiosity,” the hero says brightly. “Please, continue.”

Like a broken record, “You first.”

“Ah, y’know, the usual.” The hero doesn’t really want to say it out loud. “I, uh… I killed someone.”

“Oh.” The silence following that is uncomfortably long, until, thankfully, the villain adds, “Yeah, you’re right, that’s not very heroic.”

The hero nods, though they’re not sure if the villain can see it. “I didn’t mean to. It was another villain. I don’t know who—they had red hair and glasses.”

“Oh,” the villain repeats, a little more strained this time. “Yeah, that’ll do it. They’re one of [Supervillain]’s favourites. Or were, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Eh.” The villain waves a hand at them nonchalantly. “I didn’t really like them, honestly. They were always showing me up in front of [Supervillain], but I think that’s why he liked them. I wasn’t as willing to throw my comrades under the bus for attention.”

They clear their throat awkwardly, and the hero takes the hint. “What about you, then?” they ask shortly. “What did you do?”

The villain sighs, the puff of warm air catching in the one strip of sun lighting the place. “Well, quite the opposite.” A cough of a laugh jolts them slightly, like they weren’t expecting it. “I stopped [Supervillain] from killing someone, and they got away.”

The hero sits on that for a moment. “That’s very noble of you,” they offer eventually.

“Oh, don’t you start.” The villain tsks in annoyance. “I already have [Supervillain] calling me soft for it.”

“I can’t blame him. I mean… are we sure I’m the hero and you’re the villain here?”

The villain laughs like the idea is ludicrous, and the hero laughs too because it is, but then a silence falls over them and the hero knows that they’re both thinking the same thing.

“You know,” the villain starts slowly, “I’ve never really liked being here.”

The hero snorts humorously. “I can’t say I’m a big fan of grotty dungeons either.”

“Not here, you moron,” the villain snaps. “I mean here, with the villains. As one of them.”

“Oh, cheers to that. The agency has too many rules.”

“This hellhole doesn’t have enough.”

“Well,” the hero says brightly, “I’m sensing something big is happening here.”

The villain hums thoughtfully. “Can we maybe talk about it outside of the dank dungeon?”

“Oh, I thought you’d never ask.” The hero’s mind is already running through plans, scenarios, ways of escape. It’s always easier with a teammate, anyway. “Let’s get the hell out of here and start our new lives.”

[pain-in-the-butler]

yesterday was the 15th anniversary of me officially being in the fandom!

here's to fifteen years of forcing people to read my kuroshit 😌

[campbyler]

ik part of it is that life and work just Be Like That sometimes, but every time i check back on your blog it seems yall are going through chronic ao3 author syndrome. sending love and good vibes your way i hope all three of you are doing ok and can catch a break soon!! (ik suni and thea yall are the ones writing the rest of it but sending love to andi as well)

also any tips on writing longer chapters without them sounding like they’re dragging on? i’m a (more casual) fic writer and my chapters always end up a little shorter than i usually hope they’d be

awake at 3am in a fit of jet lag and laughed aloud upon reading this bc you’re not wrong 😭 i feel like part of it is just timing, like thea’s work has a big busy season during the fall every year and her schedule also varies week by week and even day to day so i know some stretches are more difficult than others by default (rn she has been having to work from home on her weekend or after she clocks out which has been extra rough). my work tends to have bursts of insane work days every few weeks or so, and i just have a shitty daily commute on top of that and will sometimes get home like 12 hours after i left in the morning or something. so honestly there is a nonzero chance one of us is having a subpar time on any given workday i fear, and that schedule is pretty unpredictable given the nature of our very full time jobs. i also think it’s just statistically more likely that when we are active there is a reason for our Grievances to be brought up, either organically because we are coming out of a slump and are complaining about the Horrors or because someone checked in on us in a period of absence and we are giving a quick update, but either way, thank you so much for your wishesssss! thea will be getting a break soon (thank god) and i’m actually entering a bit of a busy stretch at work for the next week or so because we have a grant deadline to meet, which always means 10000 last minute experiments that i have to work into my schedule in the middle of the week and it’s really fun and lovely and great. woo hoo. 🙂

as for chapter lengths, i wish i had more solid advice but my problem is genuinely that i can’t for the life of me seem to trim them down 😭 i guess a part of it is largely how your chapters are structured — i only have a couple chaptered fics outside of acswy, but all of them are planned so that each chapter is quite meaty in terms of content or what i want each scene to accomplish. i will say that the singular thing that consistently drives up my word count is DIALOGUEEEEE!!! a blessing when i’m in a rut or have writers block and am trying to get something down on the page, a menace when im editing a scene transition i left to fill in for later and my wc is right at 29k and im sweating watching the number tick up. i find there’s absolutely nothing wrong with shorter chapters if it’s accomplishing what you hope for and i honestly am working really hard on trying to be more concise, but i do find dialogue to be a good way to slow down a scene that’s maybe rushing or is paced a little quicker than you intended. real conversations often stray off topic, people ramble or get sidetracked or get interrupted by things they’re doing — i love describing people talking while doing chores or eating or whatever because you can break up the dialogue with bits of action — and at least for me, it’s a lot easier to work in some narration or description in with dialogue than it is to just write a couple paragraphs of it straight up, which also sometimes feels a little more blunt and Quick than i intend it to be. one thing we both do a Lot is script out dialogue between characters and then go back in to fill in things like speech tags, action descriptions, inner monologues and thoughts, etc. literally just like:

character 1: ___ character 2: _______ 1, (note on how it’s meant to be said or what they’re thinking/intending to say to cue us in later): _____ 2: _____________ (small description of them moving around/something happening in the background to give a visual for describing later)

so on and so forth. it helps a lot either when we want to establish the setup of a dialogue heavy scene before we forget our inspiration, or we’re feeling a bit too blocked to be able to write more descriptively at the moment, etc etc. it’s a really natural way to focus on the flow of conversation without getting caught up in transitions and repetition of dialogue tags and stuff, and usually is the culprit for a scene taking way longer to finish than expected for me.

all that being said, the times i have actually felt like a chapter is paced too quickly is usually either when the dialogue exchange is too fast and feels like the conversation could be more fleshed out, or maybe likeeee a transition happens a little too immediately and it reads a little bit like one thing happening after the next after the next without much of a pause for expansion. if you’ve managed to get your point across in fewer words and your main concern is driving up the word count, i really wouldn’t worry about it! you could always have someone look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and ask for places they feel could use more explanation or detail (maybe describing a setting more vividly? or giving more insight to some of their thoughts at a certain point?) but genuinely — conciseness is a Skill, and seeing how i have once again accidentally answered an ask with one million words, i’ll actually just trade you some of my internal word vomit right now. here you go -> 🎁

[somegrumpynerd]

I'm actually super curious about Horror's over eating problem like, in the first two weeks? I'm kinda wondering how Nightmare helped with that!

In his defence, after what he went through pretty much any eating would have been too much.

Like Horror hadn't eaten in years, and suddenly he finds himself in a place where food just exists. Like it's just around and he can take it - he's encouraged to take it because after the other two Nightmare was making a point of saying you must eat to his henchmen when they joined.

So he did the only reasonable thing and went hog wild.

There was no problem as far as the others were concerned - Nightmare was honestly relieved to see he'd chosen a mortal who would feed himself, and hearing him rip into an entire loaf of bread dry like an animal was the right first impression to leave on Dust and Killer. (Not that either of them would kill a teammate for fun, but without any LV and no kills Horror was lacking the intimidation factor they had. It's amazing how after you watch a guy shovel dry pasta shapes into his mouth by hand like his life depends on it you want to give him a bit of space to settle in).

The problem really was that going from eating nothing for years to eating half a kitchen all at once is a terrible idea, and he ended up making himself pretty sick from it. But the next time he went to the kitchen he just did it again, because the fear of going back to starvation told him to just eat it all now so it couldn't disappear. This went on for days, to the point Nightmare was considering doing a tour of aus to find a doctor who could find out what was wrong (and not rat him out to Dream), until Dust came forward with the suggestion of building him up slowly.

It was rough having to limit him, Horror has never been as grumpy as he was in those first few weeks (it turns out he didn't need the pasta to match the others on intimidation, hunger mood swings work just fine.) But eventually he was able to keep food down, and by then Nightmare had made a schedule to make sure they weren't fed too much or too little which was useful for all three.

So he finally had all his henchmen eating properly! And it only took like 2 years c:

[maddiemuu]

i have bronchitis :(

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

maybe another cup of coffee will Fix Me,

[evil-cryptile]

Fabrics are just ones of those things that have to click for you to understand how to draw them. Aka comparison between my still lives from end of last year to the current nightmare im pushing through

[moreaujeans]

im so sick of exams i swear to GODDD

[ineffablefool]

How the hell is all this acrylic paint that I bought for a class I signed up for in 2004 (not a typo) still wet?

[mr-jaybird]

been working 2 jobs the last year and about to pick up a 3rd job so we can afford to buy a house

[riddlesnap]

And was if someone wanted to do those “base endeavors” with you?

"Hah! It wouldn't be so surprising - I am an exemplary human being after all so it would only be natural for anybody with some degree of intellect rattling around in their skulls would consider me an attractive mate. Let it be known that I, Edward Nigma, would be the perfect partner in all fields including that!" Edward said smugly without skipping a beat.

[faggling]

The worst part of taking an opiate is having to eat something with it

[intertexts]

also agh... this semester is like. 21 credits. which is. doable!!!! since they r all Good classes with professors i know well & like & who like me & i enjoy all the course material. except oh my godddddddd i dont know if i can fucking work too!!!!!

[jankwritten]

Just had the strangest series of nightmares where each one was like, a flash game. The scariest one was called “where are you, Alec” where I was trapped in this time loop, doomed to die until the loop deemed me worthy of the cure for the disease that was infecting the world. Except, the man causing the disease was hunting me down.

Some of the scenarios in the loop: I was in a compound of uninfected people but we were curious about what was beyond the fences. We started tossing things over to see what would happen. Then, a man hopped the fence. I immediately tried to escape because I knew deep down he was a bad bad person. I left the compound running full tilt but he was easily keeping pace right beside me, grinning with huge eyes. I can’t remember how that loop ended.

Another one was me running from someone and trying to make it to my home base. I made it, but I ran into the wrong room (a tiny, cramped space) and the person chasing me ran into the room I was trying to get into. I was stuck in that tiny room, holding the flimsy, non-latching door shut. For eight years.

The first one was me as an exchange student into a Japanese class. It was fairly normal at first, but there was this baby that kept appearing, and I had to take care of it even though it was getting sicker and sicker. This wasn’t my baby, I didn’t know whose baby it was. The last thing I remember from that loop is the baby puking up green mush all over the cafeteria floor.

Eventually I was “deemed worthy” to gain access to the cure. There was a car that held the last remaining cure, which appeared speeding past me going the other direction. I then had to chase the car until I caught up to it, through all these obstacles (people, off road, lookalikes, etc.) until I finally caught it.

The cure was in this half empty water bottle, a powder. I shook it to mix it all up and drank half of it - it was NASTY. It tasted like carbonated water and salt and bittering agent. I remember thinking it could be a trap and that this was the disease, that I was going to become infected.

And then the man showed up right in front of my car. He was grinning, enveloped in this static purple cloud. The type of grin that you just know means this person wants to hurt you, was looking for you just to torture you. I clenched my eyes shut and the whole world turned into that purple static, the man laughing as everything turned to chaos-

And then it stopped! And it was peaceful, a silent world with this gorgeous nature view and everything. I didn’t feel relieved (I had just spent like DECADES going through this time loop) but I knew it was over.

And then it all snapped to black and I heard the man cackling. He said “Where are you, Alec?” And then I woke up.

There were another couple, this one where I had to enter a hotel room and wait until the chairs in the room stopped moving before I moved in to put them back. If I moved too early, this tall (7’ or taller) lady with long black hair and grey skin, unblinking eyes and a straight face, would come out from the darkness moving just a little too fast to be human and grab me. If I looked away from her face I would lose. I couldn’t stop myself, though, because she was so fucking scary. That nightmare only ended when I finally slapped her, and my phone alarm went off.

There was one where I was trying to convince this group of villains that I belonged with them, that I was one of them. There was all this weird shit going on where we had to blow people up, steal shit, all that kind of stuff, to avoid being sent to hell - which was an actual place, where you would be like, air fried or some shit over and over and over again. Brutal and bad. I remember the person who’d been there explaining that it was like your outside became brittle and dry while your insides turned to soup and you just kept shrinking in this agonizing, unending heat, until you ceased to exist. And then they brought you back to do it all over again. We were trying to steal stuff from the store to replace other shit so we could trick the other villains into sending someone else to hell in our places, because we were the ones who’d killed their leader.

There was another flash game type thing but I was frantic during it because the last dream of the lady in the hotel room so I don’t remember the objective, only that I had to stack things in a toilet and I was locked in a handicap bathroom stall. I was so scared to leave the stall that even after I “won” the game, I just started sobbing and wouldn’t leave. That was the last one before I woke up.