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So... cub's recent tweet

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tony stark fanfic writers today have nothing on the sheer perfection and characterization that was avengers 2012 fanfic writers and their 3k-10k oneshots centered around tony stark and his friends in his funny tower

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i genuinely NEED to read another stark siblings time travel fic i need to interact and consume and comment and kudos and bookmark about these absolutely insane dysfunctional codependent siblings who hate each other love each other would tear each other apart would lovingly wrap each other’s wounds would leave each other behind would protect each other with their own life

also i just think a house of the dragon and all the stark siblings time travel fic would be sick. but mostly it’s about the siblings

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the Batkids as the Seven Deadly Sins

except I’m creative (because a lot of these require creativity)!and give reasons for it <3

And once again please don’t burn me at the stake Batfam fandom—

Thanks to @fictfrenzy for helping me with these!!!

@themoonwitch-mustspeak @illustrativewriter @lena-thinks-too-much @lordbasilsnek

also @favoritebatfam you inspired me!!

Sloth

Jason Todd

Sloth can be stubborn. A refusal to change. A refusal to grow. A willing ignorance of the harm your actions cause. Or perhaps a knowledge one refuses to act on.

Jason Todd is stubborn. He’s right. Of course his way is right. And even if it isn’t, he won’t stop. It’s necessary. So it’s right. He’s right. It’s not like he’s doing the same kid of “justice” he spent his childhood battling against.

Pride

Cassandra Cain

Pride can be necessary. You are the best. It’s all you’ve ever been and all you’ll ever be. You are the best. You have to be. The alternative isn’t possible.

Cassandra Cain is the strongest. She will always be the strongest. She is the best. She was made to be the best. She was shaped to be the best. She needs to be the best. If she isn’t the best, what is she even worth?

Envy

Damian Wayne

Envy can be fear. Envy can be eyes cast around you. The drive to be better. To be better than them. Because if you’re better, than you don’t have to fear the other shoe. If you’re better, you are safe.

Damian Wayne is vigilant. He cannot help the anxiety in his chest at the feats of his siblings. They are better. He hates them for it. He hates them so he does not hate himself. It doesn’t work. And he’s still terrified.

Gluttony

Dick Grayson

Gluttony can be possessive. It was yours first. They were yours first. Why can’t they just stay yours?

Dick Grayson is possessive. Robin is his. He carved a space for child heroes with his own hands. He was Batman’s first protege. This, too is his. His siblings want what is his, yet they are his too. He loves them with all his soul. Yet sometimes… he just twitches. He was lonely once. He was lacking once. Gods help him, he will not be lonely again.

Greed

Stephanie Brown

Greed can be bandaging. Greed can be lacking. Lacking and wanting and needing. You have nothing, but you hunger for it all. He had nothing for so, so long. That ache never goes away. You do all you can to fill it. You are not satisfied.

Stephanie Brown is repairing herself. She has it all, finally. She has it. She wants it all. She wants the comfort and the safety and the love and the validation and the joy. She wants to dance in the knowledge that she has won. But it still hurts. She never stops bleeding. She’s still desperate.

Lust

Tim Drake

Lust can be curiosity. Lust can be fascination. Lust can be obsession. Lust can be wanting to have without learning how to hold. Lust can desire (of any kind, really) without understanding.

Tim Drake is curious. He likes people. It’s alright if they do not know him. It’s easy like that. He can have, and he will not get hurt. He knows he does not have, not really, but it’s easiest to pretend.

Wrath

Duke Thomas

Wrath can be quiet. Wrath can be cold. Wrath can be tucked up tight in your chest. Waiting. Wrath can be the gnawing away of everything you were before.

Duke Thomas is kind. They don’t notice that he is not polite. He smiles. He cares. But he is waiting. The burning in his ribs will not go away. He has a city to fix. He revels in the anger fueling him. He just hopes there will be something left of him when the rage has cooled.

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fandom about some mf (is a man): you might dislike this character but you have to admit he's very interesting. even if you don't like him, he's a very well-written character. he's very complex. so even if you dislike him you should maybe reconsider that. because he's complex and interesting. and i think deep down he cares so much. there's a lot to analyze about his decisions, which he was force to make due to the terrible position he was put in. and if you don't like him you don't really understand the show tbh.

same fandom about a woman who has done comparable or much tamer things, with a much smaller fraction of fans: this may be a hot take but no one else has said this and i have to get this off my chest. some of you might like her but she is a TERRIBLE PERSON! she didn't have to do any of those things she did. she put herself into a bad situation, inconveniencing everyone around her and showing no remorse for it whatsoever. you may like her but i just don't get it!! if you like her or defend any of her actions, you are probably a real life abuser and hate women. so even if you do like her, maybe think about that. you can like her but you have to admit her flaws. otherwise you are encouraging women in real life to murder others and commit crimes, which is ignorant and wrong. her sympathetic scenes are not even canon because they're so manipulative, performative, and trite. such a waste of screen time very obviously trying to get us to feel bad for a MONSTER! she clearly didn't actually mean any of the good things she's done. deep down she is just a rotten human being with no motive but to make other people's lives miserable. i'm sorry but that's the truth.

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Changeling Joel ft some old greats, based on this tweet

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bug joel (feat. boat boys)

vaguely inspired by this post

ao3

The first time Etho notices anything strange about what Joel eats is when he kills a zombie, and without hesitation, puts the rotten flesh into his mouth and eats. It isn’t rushed or forced either—just like he’s replenishing health, ignoring that it’ll only make him hungrier later.

“Joel, I have food,” Etho decides to pipe up, because maybe Joel is trying to conserve food? Strange and unnecessary, considering it’s only the second session, but he’s seen weirder, more paranoid people. And this is his soulmate. There’s probably more baggage hidden under that manic psyche.

“Mh? Yeah, so do I,” Joel shrugs, roughly. He finishes the last of the rotten flesh and picks up his axe to deconstruct the crafting table in front of them.

Etho pauses. Maybe he’s trying to avoid the subject. But it doesn’t feel right, and the cold, quiet thought of something more sinister settles uncomfortably in his chest. Carefully, he places the thought somewhere he will remember, and keeps it in mind.

It becomes habit, to keep food on hand, and subtly test Joel’s preferences. It’s easy enough to see what he prefers—berries of any kind, pumpkin seeds, apples, and the occasional raw meat, although Joel refuses them most of the time.

“It’s less efficient,” Joel murmurs to him, legs swinging over their terraced gardens. Then he turns to Etho with that look in his eye, and Etho obligingly brings the glowberries out of his inventory, watching as Joel leans forward to eat it out of his hand then leans back, self-satisfied. It’s eccentric and eclectic, but as long as Etho is sure Joel is eating, he doesn’t really mind.

But they’re not together all the time: Etho goes mining, Joel builds their base, and on the way back, he stumbles across a pale garden. Or, more accurately, he comes across Joel, knelt down and pulling out pale moss from the muddy ground to eat. Etho mumbles a curse under his breath, crossing the marshy grounds in a few strides to where his soulmate sits, completely content.

“Joel,” Etho says, pulling the man up and feeling him relax against him, which also apparently means he decides to put all his weight on Etho. He readjusts his footing, scowling at Joel, limply lying on him. There’s a certain energy buzzing under Joel’s skin, not shaking, but close.

“Etho,” he laughs, grinning up at him as he waves a hand towards their base. “I finished our base—a boat—one of the best, if I do say so myself.”

"That's nice. Good," Etho replies, almost on autopilot. "I'd like to see it." Joel smiles at him brilliantly, and Etho absentmindedly wipes away the recesses of dirt on his chin and face before Joel languidly detaches himself and leads him towards their base.

"So why were you at a pale forest?" Etho awkwardly asks, fingers easily drumming a steady beat on his sword's hilt. He pushes some hanging moss out of his way.

Joel looks at him a little incredulously, as if he's being the unreasonable one. "Cause the moss tastes good. Why were you in the deep dark? You do realize, if you die, I die?"

He pauses. "Joel," Etho says, then another time, more insistently, "Joel." The other stops in his tracks, looking back at him almost impatiently.

"Etho, I know you're trying to stall so you don't need to see the boat. I know your tricks, they don't work. I swear it actually looks good."

Etho sighs. "I know. I saw it from a distance; she's a thing of beauty." A pause. "Joel, we need to talk."

Immediately Joel laughs, a nervous thing, and the man studies him from under his fringe, green eyes calculating. "Sounds pretty ominous, doesn't it?"

"It's not—never mind. Joel, it's about the food."

"The food? We have plenty. We have a sheep farm, you brought over cows, needing more sounds a bit greedy," Joel shoots back, because his soulmate has a propensity for deflecting, apparently. Etho breathes past the whirlwind in his chest, insistent and too loud for its own good.

"That's my food source. You're eating moss off the ground and half-rotten berries," Etho retorts, because they're getting nowhere.

Joel makes an affronted noise. "I do not! Most of the berries you give me are fine. The rotten ones are appreciated more, though."

Etho wonders if he'll ever start to understand him. Concern wars with exasperated fondness, and he really doesn't know how he's gotten wrapped up with this man. Because if someone has told Joel before, that they were more important than him, that he didn't deserve proper food, much less food at all...

"Why?" he asks, careful to not allow his tone to go too flat, but Etho's pretty sure he failed.

Joel blinks back at him, confused, before a wave of understanding washes over his face, and with it, amusement. "Etho, did you not know? I'm a scavenger. As in an insect hybrid. Or well, a springtail, which is a hexapod, and technically doesn't fall under insects at all, but it's about the closest—"

"Joel," Etho says, and the man looks up to stare him in the eyes. "...Nothing. I'm just glad you're okay."

Joel's face splits into a grin, filled with personal and teasing amusement as they easily make their way through the forest. "Aww, Etho, I didn't know you cared so much."

They'll be okay. They have a sheep farm, partly for the wool and partly for the meat. He'll plant more sweet berry bushes nearby. One life down between the two of them is nothing.

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OK so I’m gonna expand on this post a little bit:

Anakin Skywalker is such a Gordian knot of issues that if you want to have a genuine analysis of his character and where everything went wrong, you kind of have to address all of it:

You have to acknowledge he was a slave child until he was 9. Acknowledge that the dehumanization and lack of control left such a gigantic stain on Anakin’s psyche that he can’t even go to tattooine without getting angry

You have to acknowledge that Qui-gon, who was rooting for him and willing to rush Kenobi through the trials just to teach him, who was always in his corner, died. Not only that, but that Obi-wan wasn’t ready to take him on due to grieving qui-gon, but took him on anyway to honor his dead master.

You have to acknowledge that palpatine was doing his damndest to sink his teeth into Anakin since they met on Naboo. That a lot of Anakin’s behavior can be traced back to the way that palps has been trying to corrupt this kid and subjugate him, that nobody noticed because…well, the Sith have been dead for 1000 years and obi-wan killed the last one, why would anybody suspect palpatine?

You have to acknowledge that, due to all of these factors, Anakin massacred a tusken tribe. Watching his mom die, palpatine’s grooming, hell, even a lack of understanding of the Jedi code you could say, caused him to think murder, even of innocents, was okay. Yes, the decision was made in emotional duress, but also…Anakin still had a choice. He could’ve left the Tuskens alone, keeping that grief on a leash until he could bury his mother, and then let it out in a healthy way.

But he didn’t. He chose the immediate, convenient option: murder.

And then before he can properly process everything, before he can genuinely realize what he did was wrong (which he almost does at the larses), he’s thrust into saving Obi-wan, and then the war.

Part of me wonders if he ever got cognitive dissonance from leading the clones.

Part of me wonders if palpatine nipped that in the bud when he caught wind of it.

The thing is, Anakin has a hierarchy of people he cares about:

Palpatine and Padme on top, obi-wan and Ahsoka in the middle, Rex, the clones, and the Jedi third, and then the rest of the galaxy last.

This comes in clutch when he falls: he listens to palpatine’s machinations because this is the guy that he trusts, right? Palpatine’s never gonna lead him astray, right?

Anakin struggles with being a part of a group, feeling like he can’t be like that with the Jedi because he wasn’t raised from toddlerhood by them (at least, I believe). In the movie:

He feels that he should be put at the same position of respect as the rest of the masters, but they won’t do that because they know he’s not ready for the responsibility

Yoda (due to not having the context that Anakin’s worried Padme will die in childbirth) accidentally invalidates Anakin’s emotions by telling him that if she dies, she dies

Is told by the Jedi that he has to spy on palpatine (his friend!) because they fear he’s gathering as much power as he can (because he is)

It’s just little chinks in the armor.

Then, palpatine swoops in and assuages Anakin that Padme can be saved: all he has to do is learn sith powers, and she can be healed!

Throughout the movie, it’s just a slow roll of isolating Anakin from people he trusts, until by the end, Palp has him desperate to be his sithly apprentice.

But again, Anakin has a choice: he could’ve killed palpatine when the man revealed himself as the sith, he could’ve not killed mace either.

But he did.

Because the moment palpatine told him there was a way to save Padme, he had Anakin hook, line, and fucking sinker.

This is why attachments are bad. They’re not love, they’re desperation, clawing at your feet, sinking their teeth into you and filling your head with fear and paranoia.

Anakin didn’t tell yoda about his marriage because he knew Yoda would consider it an attachment, and scold him about it. He didn’t tell obi-wan about the depth of his dreams in ep II because he thought that as a Jedi, the concern of his mom dying would be considered an attachment and that the Jedi wouldn’t take him seriously.

But again, it was his choice to not give them the full context, because he was embarrassed that he wouldn’t be considered a true Jedi.

And that embarrassment, fear, possessiveness, everything, has left its bloodstains.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this, Anakin’s not even my favorite character, it’s just.

I’m tired of seeing fics where people boil him down to just “annoying idiot that everyone in his immediate vicinity tolerates because something something obi wan something something chosen one”

(And I have my problems with how fandom treats obi-wan so if you wanna hear them, lemme know)

I’m tired of people using the fact that he’s doomed to become darth Vader to just write him off and and do nothing of interest with.

Let him be happy! Let Cody or Rex or the Jedi or bail or whoever be genuinely interested in what he has to say!!! Let him be an interesting character and have him play with the other interesting characters!!!

But also let him be messy!!!!!

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Cassandra Cain has played Undertale a thousand times and all of them she has chosen the pacifist route. Tim offered to play the neutral and/or genocide routes for her so she could find out what happens but the second he hit Toriel Cass snatched the laptop from him and killed the power so it wouldn't register for the game. They're both looking at the black screen, Cass with the saddest most concerned look ever so Tim tries to calm her down.

"I don't think it counts like that, the game won't remember."

And Cass turns to look at him all miserable with a tiny "but I will".

They replay the entire pacifist run again and Tim never suggests the other routes again.

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Ink & Dream Character Study Through the Lens of Each Other

(Or, my attempt to reconcile the two as friends)

Fascinatingly, Dream mistrusts Ink in canon because of his inability to care about people’s wellbeing, even though Ink is also a ‘guardian of AUs’ (self proclaimed lmao)

Nonetheless, Dream himself is unable to not save worlds, no matter the circumstance, which creates a really interesting dichotomy where Ink’s goal is ultimately selfish (to keep himself alive, because the very production of alternate universes is what sustains him) and Dream’s goal is, very much like Ink’s, what drives his very existence and continued purpose. 

In addition, Ink cannot feel genuine desire to intrude in stories because it would simply lead to him stealing a soul for himself and destroying his self-purported purpose to protect the timelines. In contrast to Dream, who can’t feel anything but the lack of negativity, how could he stand by and watch people needlessly suffer when he could intervene and help?

(So what is better than the other, the selfish wish of one to exist and have purpose, or the intrinsic, driving force of one to exist and have purpose?)

// credits: ink sans - @/comyet

dream sans - @/jokublog