#<- less of a comic and more of me trying to get a vision down on paper because its been haunting me for werks

[mythtiide]

todays, yesterdays, and day before yesterdays falklers! literally i have not been drawing much this week, just really cant lock in like i need to . anyways! 🐇

[maxwell-grant]

So is Worm good from what you have read

"Yes" doesn't begin to cover it but yes. Worm is a brain-rewiring mobius strip disguised as a bible disguised as a superhero web serial that either cured your cancer or shot your dog or both depending on who you ask, and it has many extremely dedicated, brilliant scholar priest surgeons publicly dissecting it on this platform on the regular to the point I don't think I have much to add to the conversations surrounding it, even if I do have some The Thoughts about it. I had never even really seriously thought about superhero prose before and Worm isn't a thing I go back and reread frequently but it did a complete and total 180 on the way I think about superheroes and even fiction, and I've never stopped thinking about it since I've read it.

It is a monumentally impressive story with completely absolutely incredible characters that I cannot stop thinking about. No matter where it was going, even past stretches that were less interesting or more of a slog to read or worse, I could not put the story of Taylor Hebert down for one minute. Tattletale fascinated me every step of the way, I had to keep up with her. Rachel Lindt was a character I feel like I'd been waiting my whole life for. What was I gonna do, not see them through? I feel like Worm easily loses you if you don't particularly connect with the characters enough to justify to yourself the amount of time you'll spend with them, but man, I could not unglue my eyeballs from these people enough (I love all the core Undersiders, to be clear, I'd say it's Rachel > Taylor > Tattletale > Aisha and Alec and Brian, there are very small gaps between these, I just don't go berserk for the last three like I do for the first three, I'm taking Bitch and Skitter to the grave I'm dead serious)

Worm irreparably destroys your ability to engage with superhero fiction the same way ever again, as evidenced by the fact that it destroyed the author's own ability to engage with his own superhero fiction ever again. And everybody who read it has one or several gripes with it with some major dealbreakers in the mix. Tumblr's kinda the only place online where you can really talk about them at length without the spectre of John Wildbow hanging over the discussion, which enables discussion to the point where yes, maybe it does look like to outsiders that nobody can agree on whether Worm is good or what is it even about or whether it even has worms in it (it has at least one, although it's a very big one).

And it is good, it has the Undersiders in it and the Undersiders are one of the greatest groups of characters ever put together, but everyone has at least one major point of contention with Worm whether it's the timeskip or the length or the racism or the gross fatphobia or aspects surrounding the Dallon-Pelham Torment Nexus and etc. I'd say it has maybe the most racist vision of Latin America I've ever seen in a superhero text a hair short of pro-colonial tracts in Golden Age comics and that is a tall fucking order by any metric (part of why I started WEON4 as a project was motivated by spite, to try and make my own stories about non-American superheroes even if just as practice). It is Complicated, and that winds up making it so fascinating to talk about.

Worm has self-sustaining ecological systems of posts up here, far away from the Spacebattles and Reddit battlegrounds where it has different ones and that's not getting into Weaverdice or the sequel or Wildbow's larger body of work, which I haven't gotten to and probably will not any time soon because Worm was enough of a commitment as is. Do I recommend Worm to everyone? It is certainly not to everyone's tastes and I personally find it difficult to describe it simply enough to make it sound appealing or not like a pyramid scheme. But yes I do think it's good, in fact great, in fact, amazing, except when it isn't, and except it Plainly Sucks, but then something like Taylor vs Mannequin or Kevin Norton's interlude or "You needed worthy opponents" happens and it fucks harder than anything has ever fucked before and you don't walk away from it the same, so yes I guess "good" will have to do now.

It's certainly a lot but I definitely found it worth my time to read and then read the texts written about it here. You'll have to take my endorsement of Worm as proof of it's quality and proof of how deranged it makes it's readerbase, they're not mutually exclusive. If you can make it, Worm and the wormosphere has layers and layers to wade through and talk about and enjoy, despite how we're all so very small in the end *gunshot*.

[twignotstick]

Broken Brothers (and How to Fix Them)

Part 2 💙 | <- Part 1 🧡

Note: This story is based on @cupcakeslushie 's Empyrean Weeping au. These characters are not my own, and this story is in no way canon to the main story. I wrote this as my love letter to the story and the characters. Especially April :)

Tags: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ROTTMNT, Leo & April, NOT MY CHARACTERS, Empyrean Weeping AU, recovery (i have a sneaking suspicion that will apply to the whole fic,,), talking it out because we're adults, movies, comics, they're becoming friends

Warnings (if there's anything I should add here, tell me please!): Mention of violence (its one sentence, but figure I should still put it here :P)

Words: 1,588 (there's less setup this time)

Summary: April was able to figure out her first brother easily. Now, she gets three more, with a couple more issues to worry about.

----------------------

As soon as she even saw Leo for the first time, she knew he wouldn't be as easy to get along with as Mikey was. Mikey was always so open, so bright, so bouncy. Leo, in comparison, was still, dull, and closed off. He had just come from a terrible ninja clan, beaten by his own master. It was kind of warranted.

Any time April would enter the medbay where they were keeping Leo, he would silently stare a hole in her soul. His face had hardly loosened from the scowl he had adopted, and any time April would get near, it would just harden more. Even so, April kept trying to get close. Despite Raph's concerns for her physical health. (And with Mikey's encouragement, because he was happy to enable the potentially dangerous behavior.)

One afternoon, she decided to bring a ton of her Jupiter Jim comics to read. The boys needed a break from watching their somewhat-volatile-yet-severely-wounded brother, and April knew he wouldn't talk to her. So, once she settled down in her chair a few feet away from the bed where Leo was scowling, she pulled out the comic she'd left off on: Jupiter Jim Breaks Newton's Fourth Law, Volume 8.

After a few minutes of reading, April couldn't help but notice a change in Leo out of her peripheral vision. He wasn't staring at her anymore, but at her comic. This glare wasn't full of discontent and uncertainty. Instead, it was filled with emotions he was trying (and failing) to hide- curiosity and excitement.

“You read Jupiter Jim?”

Leo was surprised by the sudden question and whipped his gaze away, a slight flush coming to his cheeks. “No.”

April's journalism senses were kicking in. There was a story here. “Why not?”

“Things like that are…” Leo's posture tightened, almost as if the thing he was about to say wasn't what he believed, “useless distractions.”

“I don't think so,” April said, shifting her chair a little closer to the bed. “I think it's important to have distractions sometimes. Y'know, during finals, when you're sick, when you've got a broken arm…” Subtly, April started slipping the comic in her hands to the bed. “You can read it, if you want.”

“No. I can't.”

Leo looked surprisingly aggressive when he responded. He seemed to catch his unwarranted anger and mumbled, “I still haven't read 6 or 7.”

“Oh!” April sat up straight and grabbed her bag from the floor. “I've got the whole arc up to 9 in here, I thiiink-” Once she had fished out the comics she was looking for, she placed them on the corner of the bed by Leo's feet.

The slider stared at the comics like they'd offended him.

“...well?”

“I-I can't. I can't hold them with my arm-”

“I can hold it for you!” April said. “I can turn the pages whenever you need.”

Leo finally looked back at April with that trademark scowl he always had. “What's your game, woman?”

April smiled. “No games, just trying to make you feel comfortable in your new home.”

Leo huffed. “This isn't my home.”

“It's where your family is, isn't it? Isn't that what matters?” April asked genuinely.

Leo looked back down at the comics. His eyes softened while the rest of his expression remained, and he picked Volume 6 up with his good arm. He opened it and silently began to read.

They both sat and read for a while. April noticed Leo struggling to turn pages sometimes, but she didn't dare try to help him. She thought he might bite her hand if she did. He was still scowling at the comic as he read, but it looked less like a scowl of anger and more one of concentration.

When he got done with Volume 6, April spoke. “So, who's your favorite character?”

“...JJ, obviously.” Leo slowly reached out and grabbed the next volume.

“Seriously? That's so basic.”

Leo scoffed. “Really? Then who's your favorite character?”

“Atomic Lass, obvi,” April said, flipping her hair for emphasis.

“Atomic Lass?! Her personality is literally just ‘woman’.”

“Uh, yeah, and that's the point?! Atomic Lad is just ‘man’. Haven't you watched Jupiter Jim on the Atomic Sub-Moon?”

Leo's shoulders lowered. “...watched?”

April sprung up and put her arms on the bed, looking down at Leo in shock. “YOU'VE NEVER WATCHED A JUPITER JIM MOVIE?!”

“NO?! THEY MAKE THOSE?!”

“THAT'S IT!” April grabbed her bag from the floor and moved it over to the side of Leo's bed. “You, keep reading. I'll get one of the boys to watch you. I need to head home and get my box set. We are having a movie night. Understand?!”

“Y-yes ma'am!”

“We can start with Last Trip to the Moon 1, but then we are watching Atomic Sub-Moon, I DO NOT care if the context is lost, you'll figure it out.”

“O-okay?!”

“RAPH!”

----------------------

“So… the real Atomic Lad and Atomic Lass are dead?!”

“Yes! And the Atomic Lad and Lass we know are-”

“People carrying on the legacy, who the Atomic people believe are still the originals?!”

“YES! That's why they never use their real names, that's why-”

“Why they act like Barbie and Ken for space…”

“Now you get it!” April leaned back into her bean bag and put her arms behind her head. The movie night had gone way better than expected. They had to set up the best pillow pile they could, since they didn't have a sofa big enough for everybody. In the end, April and Leo stayed in bean bags and watched the movies while the others went about their day. It took a minute for Leo to get into it, but once the moon buggy showed up, he was hooked. For the first time, April saw a child in Leo. 

“So, have I won you over with an emotional, heart breaking backstory?” April asked slyly.

“Uh, no.”

April's eyes snapped to the slider. “WHAT?! What do you meeean?! I don't get how you like JJ more than Atomic Lass!”

“Well, he's the main character for a reason, for one.” Leo took another bite of the pizza slice he had been eating. “And second, he's the one who always gets everyone out of the bad stuff. He's the hero, and he isn't scared to sacrifice for his crew.”

“But, consider this, Atomic Lass has a giant rocket powered hammer, Leo.”

“JJ doesn't need a weapon. He's got the nerve pinch technique.”

“They never use the nerve pinch technique, though!” April whined.

“That doesn't mean he doesn't have it!”

“I never thought someone could be as dorky as April,” Raph said from where he stood a few feet away from the bean bag setup. “And yet, here we are.”

“Wh- dorky?!” Leo scoffed, looking at Raph incredulously.

“Yeah, dorky!” Mikey popped out from behind Raph's shoulder. “Y'know, nerdy? Geeky? Criiinge?”

Leo's face flushed and he curled in on himself, stammering.

“Hey, y'all are just jealous that we're bonding,” April defended. “If you gave JJ a chance, you'd like it too.”

Raph and Mikey both shut up quick. April waved them off, and they hurried out to the kitchen again, saying they were “getting more snacks”.

Now that they were alone, April looked over at Leo again. “They're stupid. Can't appreciate good media.”

“Good media?” Leo asked. “You mean B-Movies and old comics?”

“Yeah, man.” April grabbed a blanket and tossed it over at Leo, making him fumble to keep it off his face with his good arm. “It makes you feel good, doesn't it?”

Leo looked down and contemplated. “I mean… yeah. But I-”

“Shouldn't?”

Leo took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

“You don't have to worry about what you should or shouldn't do here, Leo,” April said, sitting more upright to look at Leo better. “You do what you want. What makes you feel good. That's all you should worry about when you're home. Doing what you want and feeling good.”

Leo turned away, looking at the TV, paused at the end of the credits.

“If it means anything, this really made me feel good,” April said. “It's cool to have somebody to talk about ‘nerd stuff’ with. And I'm glad you liked the movies. Atomic Sub-Moon is one of my favorites. Not as good as Pluto Vacation 4, but good.”

“There's more?” Leo asked timidly.

“Oh, there's loads more!” April grinned. “There's like a jillion Last Trip to the Moons, there's Jupiter Jim and the Overly Complicated Magic System, Jupiter Jim Squared Minus One, Jupiter Jim Breaks into Federal Prison, there's tons! We can have more movie nights, if you want.”

Leo looked at the blanket laying over him, grabbing it and rubbing it between his fingers. “I think… I think I want that.”

April pumped her fist. “Sweet! This means I've still got time to win you over to the Atomic Side.”

Leo let a single laugh escape his lips. “Yeah, not happening. Jim is the best, I don't care what you say. Even Red Fox is better than Atomic Lass.”

“AH! HOW DARE YOU?!” April stood up and looked down at Leo. “Just you wait, nonbeliever. Just wait until I show you the Atomic Lass spinoff comic. Or the Atomic Lass movies. You will change.”

“I wouldn't bet on it.”

“Oh YEAH?! I will bet on it. I'll bet on it so hard, you can call me Troy Bolton.”

Leo's eyes nervously shifted from side to side, centering back on April. “...who?”

“...YOU'VE NEVER SEEN HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL?!”

“NO?!?”

“RAPH!”

○●○●○●○

Yippee! Part 2! Part 3 is giving me more... issues... so it might take a minute to come out. But its coming! 🟪🐢

I really leaned into Leo's inner dorkiness here. I just thought him and April bonding over their obsession with an insane astronaut man was so cute. <3 (This is also why I'm so excited for the rest of Leo's arc in the actual comic! GAH!!!)

Congrats to everyone who won the first round of @tmntaucompetition voting! Very excited for the next round coming up :)

Part 3 -> 💜

[courtingchaos]

oooo but what about Doesn't-Know-He's-An-Incubus Eddie. like growing up his life was completely normal until he's older and starts having sex and he realizes he feels so.... strong.

This would be good too because the part I left out is him haunting comic book stores and tabletop game spaces because those girls are so desperate for a dude to not mansplain to them. They just want to be included and they know what they’re talking about and Eddie just loves teaching people. He’s like, the only dude who isn’t shooing them off or telling them they’re dumb. And it would get him so much ass.

Like picture it. He’s unaware of any actual power he might have. Probably got it from Al, that Munson charm he always wielded had to come from somewhere. Eddie would see these girls getting dragged around by boyfriends who could care less that they were there, if only to show the other dudes that ‘hey, I have a girlfriend and you don’t.’

He’d smile and ask them about their character sheet and next thing he knows he’s in the back of his van with her. He’s sliding into another random bed. He’s leaving after getting his world rocked enough that he feels like a brand new man. He’s finding people at the Hideout on terrible dates and suddenly he’s getting these little flashes of himself in the middle of getting his dick sucked. Nothing he’d ever seen, at least not from that angle, but they’re just brief rose tinted images.

It’d happen more and more, for longer periods. Someone’s babbling under him and he’s like, taken by visions. Sometimes it’s just him sometimes it’s someone else. Sometimes he’s just a polished version of himself, some kind of rockstar-model combo, but then he starts seeing it. That freak behavior.

“A tiefling? Really?” He asks mid stroke. He looms over her while staring through her. He can see the horns weaving through his hair. The deep purple skin and black eyes. A forked tongue flicks down at her with his grin bracketing it.

“Wh-what?” She’s breathless and gone. He shifts his gaze to catch her’s and he can’t. Eyes fogged over with lust, mist that settles over the color of her iris.

“Is this it, your big fantasy?”

“Uh huh.”

He leans in close pushing her knees into her chest. Spread open so vulnerably under him. He could eat her up and he doesn’t think she’d ever complain. Inches from her face he’s whispering to her, talking her to the edge of her pleasure. Writhing and shaking under him, nails digging into his biceps he barely notices the scratches or the draw of blood. He hasn’t noticed the change in his voice. There’s a baseline to it, something deep and reverberating and it almost strings her orgasm along longer.

When she finally comes down and unwinds from herself Eddie realizes he never came. There was a spell happening in the back of his van, something heady and new. He could snatch that image of himself out of thin air and tuck it away for later. It makes him chuckle while she’s trying to wiggle back into her jeans.

“So do you play as a tiefling or was that just something you came up with on the spot?” He’s buttoning his own jeans and doesn’t catch her giving him a weird look.

“What?”

“The…tiefling thing. Big purple guy?” The ‘me’ is implied but he doesn’t say it.

“I don’t-I’m not-“

“I’m not picking on you.” He’s quick to reassure but she looks confused, not hurt.

She shakes her head. “I didn’t think you were.” There’s a shy smile that she tries to hide. When he opens the door to help her step out she asks if he’ll be around for next weeks session. It’s unsaid but he catches the flash of the inside of his van.

“Sure.” He’s vibrating. His skin crackles and his blood sings. This feels better than any bong rip or bump he’s sniffed. There’s a tingling along his spine as he watches her walk away and he tries to figure out just what it was he was doing in the dark.

[howlingday]

AU idea jaune the street fighter.

Combining elements from street fighter 6 as jaune becomes a well known fighter on the streets. He's no hero or villain. He just doesn't want to be bored.

Jaune: "well now...let's see if you care do something about my boredom..."

You have... NO IDEA how much I've wanted to do something like this. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to finally bring this AU I've had in mind to life. I just wasn't sure how to start it off, so... I'll go for a three-fer on this one. Three short bits to start off this story I've had in my brain for what feels like YEARS. And once again, thank you, for giving me the chance to create... My Bare Knuckle Arc.

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Again!" Jaune came charging across the yard, sprinting as hard as he could, before leaping and kicking the strike pad in his father's hands. As he landed, the pad came back in kind. "Don't slow down!"

Jaune, however, was caught off guard by the sudden rush and fell to on his back. Knowing better than to be stuck to the ground, he clapped his hands against the dirt and rolled to his feet. The pad came swinging at him too fast for him to dodge, so he held his fist up to guard his face.

But it wasn't good enough and his fist crashed into his face, bringing a stinging pain to his eye and nose. Another pad came for the other side of his head, so he brought his fist up proper this time. Learning his lesson, the impact was much less than stunning than the one before.

"Block!"

The pads retreated and a leg curled in front of him. Jaune swung his arm down to block, but it was easily batted away before his chest was struck by the heel of his father's foot. He stumbled back, grunting through the pain, bringing his hands up to block any more blows.

"Jaune!"

In a blink, the match was over, and not just because Mom called his name. No, his father's massive foot close enough to his face that he could smell it, and it was only by the grace of his mother that it didn't bash his face in today. When the foot came down, he looked to her on the porch.

"Yeah, Mom?"

"It's from Beacon!"

-------------------------------------------------------------

Jaune still couldn't believe it. He was here in Vale, waiting for the bullhead to Beacon Academy, one of the four huntsmen academies, all of which were deemed the most prestigious schools in the four kingdoms, and he was so... so...

"Aaaaaah~!" He yawned.

Because he was so bored! I mean, he was excited, too, but there wasn't anything to do in between waiting for the bullhead and actually getting on the bullhead. The gym was closed, so he couldn't work out, and the comic book shop was closed, so he couldn't read anything other than his mom's "Special Little Guy" book in case he got homesick. Not in public, anyways.

Suddenly, he heard a crash coming from inside a dark building. Judging by the pulsing lights, the thrumming music, and the open door, it looked like a night club. Nobody was standing at the door, and his curiosity got the better of him. He peered inside and he couldn't believe what he saw.

There was a fight going on! A real-life bar brawl, just like in his dad's stories! Setting his bag down, he got closer to the scene.

Okay, what was it he was supposed to do? He wanted to get in on the action, but he'd only really done one on one at home. The girl in the center of the dance floor was taking on two other girls at once! Should he wait his turn, or should he help her out?

Well, time to try out the old tried and true.

"Hey, uh, you need any hel-"

Jaune's vision blurred as he was sent into the guard rails. He felt his body slump with an arm hanging over the metal bar. Heck of a sucker punch on the blonde girl, and those two other girls weren't anywhere to be found either. Guess he was supposed to wait for his turn, right? Well now it was his turn.

"What, you still want some?" She asked, snarling with red eyes. She must have hit him really hard because he was still tearing up. Why else was her hair glowing? "I've got enough in me to put you down, too!"

Jaune didn't say anything this time. He learned a long time ago that running your mouth was an invite to running the other person's hands. He put his fists up and approached in a boxer's stance. She put her fists, letting one loose to flip the "C'mere!" at him. He wasn't falling for it. Not this time

She tossed a jab at him, testing the waters. She tapped his knuckles. He flared his nostrils. Tap. Tap. Tap.

She swung with a hook, Jaune moved in and drove an uppercut into her ribs. She backed up a bit, grunting, before she came back with a yell and another hook. Jaune kept his guard up and stepped in again, this time driving a cross into her face. She stumbled a bit, blinking at the face-shot. He was doing pretty good. Not bad for his first-

Was she getting brighter?

-------------------------------------------------------------

Jaune was in hell. He died at that bar fight last night, and he was now in hell. How else would you explain his aching body, his stomach turning, and the mocking chatter around him? The only comfort he had was his bag/pillow under his head. That, and his memory of last night's fight.

Though that last bit was only made all the more awkward by the fact that same girl was standing across from him. His saving grace was her standing with a bunch of people standing between them. Well, that and the smaller girl in her arms. He heard the fighter calling the smaller girl "Sis" which made him a little happy that she had family on the bullhead with her. Kinda made him homesick.

He didn't pull out the book, though. Too many witnesses.

"Hello, and welcome to Beacon." He looked up to see a woman speaking on the screen. "My name is Glynda Goodwitch." Suddenly, there was turbulence and whatever was said next didn't matter to Jaune. He needed a bathroom or a trashcan NOW! He bolted for the front of the bullhead, beating on the bathroom door.

No good, AND he was getting worse! He bolted for the back, the woman on the screen now gone and leaving only the beautiful view of the waters below. He didn't have time to admire the view because he was about to ruin everyone's day all over the floor of the bullhead.

How were both bullhead bathrooms occupied right now?! The statistics will show that Jaune didn't have to consider the odds. He was gonna hurl in three... two...

The bullhead door opened and Jaune bowled over everyone in his way as he rushed out. The nearest trashcan by the door, thank god, was his target. He spilled his guts into the can, making people groan and retch as they passed. So much for good first day.

Wiping his chin, he walked back into the bullhead, hell itself, and grabbed his bag. Thankfully, nobody took it while he left to... relieve himself. Which was good. Stepping out to Beacon, empty belly and sure of himself, he took in the sight of what must have been straight from a fairy tale! Tall, towering, er, towers... towered over- There were towers, okay?

Oh, and students were already walking around with weapons, too! Guess they started handing them out now. Okay, he just had to find out where the armory or the forge or whatever was making their weapons was and he could get started on building his weapons!

Oh wow, they really got some pretty neat weapons, huh? I mean, that kid has a collapsible staff, and she has a fire sword, too! Then he saw one girl whip out her scythe in the middle of the street! And nobody is batting an eye! Okay, time to ask somebody.

"Uh, excuse me?"

"Uh, yeah?" A bald guy replied, a bow strapped to his back.

"Where did you get your weapon?"

"I, uh, built it myself back at Sanctum." He replied. He then looked Jaune up and down and around, then pointing at Jaune's bag. "Is your weapon in your bag?"

"Huh?" He looked down. "Uh, no, that's just my bag. Wait, hang on, where do I get my weapon?"

"You should have had it since you got here." He then checks his watch. "Oh, shish-kabob! I gotta go, but, uh, I'd ask a professor whenever you can!"

He then ran off, leaving Jaune alone. In the street. With his bag. And nothing else. It was at this moment that Jaune knew... he done goofed.

"Fu-"

[ineffablestardust]

Wake up besties the dinluke faves collaborated !!!!

To which @swedenis-h​ had this super sweet comic idea and I wanted to do it justice :D 

Comic sketches (courtesy of the lovely @swedenis-h​) 

Oneshot (courtesy of me lol) 

Dusk on Tatooine had always been filled with heady purple and the last licks of sweat the day tried to cling to, the day like an overenthusiastic mastiff trying to be led away.

Two dots of red on the horizon, a flickering fire- Tatooine shed its warmth like washing slobber from skin. The day’s heat lingered, and lingered… and vapourised without warning.

A flicker of silver, a spark of gold.

The smell of hot circuitry, huddling closer to the fire. Luke tried to stay still as Din removed the wiring tool from the open wiring panel of his robot hand.

"It's beautiful work." Din complimented gently, lowly, his gloved fingertips tracing the palm lines of Luke's prosthetic hand. Almost as if he was tracing the lines of a map, learning the routes by heart. Luke imagined it would feel really nice, if there hadn't been a dull edge of metallicism to every sensation from that hand.

"It doesn't..." Luke fights a frustrated noise, feelings stuck in his throat like backed up Tatooine traffic. His throat tightened.

A breath.

"It's not." Luke admits finally, gaze shifting to meet Din's. A warriors fire sparking in his eyes for the tiniest moment as he resigned himself to unravelling this particular insecurity for Din the way he had cracked the circuitry of his robotic hand wide open.

Young, immature. The harbingers that were supposed to breed wisdom and maturity… may have only just hurt the people he loved.

How could it not have? With Han’s sight affected for the rest of his life and Leia having nightmares about watching the empire take Han away…

Forces, he’d been so stupid. Too wrapped up in the thrill of getting to finally use Force for good to realize the time had been wrong.

Would the situation had resolved itself without his intervention? Had Luke lost his hand for nothing?

"This is going to sound weird…" Luke trailed with a reluctant smile, struggling with the words- embarrassment reigning them in until they crowded in his mouth. Hesitancy to lay bare; a fog he couldn’t shake. “But…”

He grimaced.

"It's not your hand?" Din asked, ripping the words right out of his mouth. Luke blinked back at him, surprised.

Luke gulped thickly, but the tight knot of emotion wouldn't unravel.

"Yeah." Luke murmured reflexively, casting his gaze down- back to his hands. They were both held aloft in front of him, palms up. In theory there wasn't much visible difference between them, but...

"Mine had calluses," Luke began, his voice cracking at the admission as his eyes darted to where the calluses used to be. "from my work at the farm."

An image of his hand before the injury conjured itself in his vision, like an overlay, as he studied the robotic one. Sticky blackness climbed his insides, his skin crawled.

A ghost he was haunted by day and night.

Din paused in his ministrations, and the silence yawned and waned in the space between them.

Luke was drawn back in.

"It had scars from working on ships," Luke explained, his left, real, hand reaching out to point to the vulnerable stretch of skin around his wrist and the skin on the other side of his hand. It was pale in a way that was uncharacteristic of Luke's tanned skin tone. The skin looked less durable than the rest of him on the robot hand, a constant chink in his armour.

A breath. Luke could see the ghost clear as day, like a sort of glitchy holo projection.

"It also matched my left hand." Luke's voice was small as he stared at the robot hand, the gaping hole where the circuitry he had been showing Din spilled out. The visible circuitry when he fixed it made it both more and less easy to see the hand as his, paradoxically.

Luke had almost lost more than his hand.

The price of his hand was nothing compared to the company of his friends. His loved ones.

He knew that.

He knew that.

But why was there such a bitterness there? A guilt and shame- the robot hand meant more than just a second chance at mobility; it meant an unspoken forgiveness from his loved ones.

And Forces, that was hard to digest.

Leia, Han and Chewie had almost died that day. It would have been his fault that their stars had blinked out, and Luke would probably never forgive himself for it.

He'd just dove in unthinkingly, all of his mind on the need to save them that he hadn't thought it through-

The robot hand was just one big scar he'd never be rid of. One big forgiveness he wasn't sure he deserved.

Why was blind, reckless, heroism worth any forgiveness?

Luke would always be haunted by his old hand- the one that had just always been a part of him- it followed him when tinkering and sparring, the loss a thing of endlessness.

A gloved hand grabbed out for the wrist of Luke's real hand, cutting Luke's absent movement short. He'd been unknowingly tracing the places his right hand used to have character and definition. Startled, Luke's thoughts fell away.

"I-I... I sound insane." Luke back-pedalled, feeling self-conscious and awash with a hot and sticky shame at the vulnerable oddity about it. Fuck, he'd opened up too much there-

A tug.

"These are my real hands," Din's warm voice followed, and Luke looked up at him with a moment of flustered confusion.

Din looked down at his own gloved hands, studying them anew. "The ones you see now."

"I know their weight. Their durability." Din flexed his hands like he was about to pick up a rifle.

"The ones underneath the gloves, I haven't seen as mine for a long time now." Din admitted softly, looking at his hands now like they were foreign to him. "They were soft, and reaching for something that doesn't exist anymore."

Oh.

And then-

Oh.

Din had lost his parents, but he was talking about the new relationship with his hands that his gloves gave him after the loss of his home. The gloves being used both to bring about vulnerability for others while protecting the vulnerability of Din's open and wanting palms from his youth.

The side of himself that never had the opportunity to mature slowly. The side that grew up too fast but there would always be a sliver of, crying out for home.

Luke blinked, looking back up at Din.

"They were hidden away with a pain I never want to feel again." Din's voice wavered, and Luke unconsciously reached out, cradling one between his cupped palms, resting it on his knee.

"Yes, these hands have seen my mistakes, but they've seen my successes, too." Din reached out with his other hand, trailing it along the territory of the faux skin of Luke's robot hand with a reverence that made Luke's face hot with something. Something between tears, appreciation and gratefulness.

Perhaps all three.

"The hands I know now were a gift." Din concluded, looking Luke right in the eye. Luke could puzzle out his message now.

"A second chance." Luke finished for Din, and he nodded affirmatively.

Not a mark of forgiveness. A possibility to start again.

"They may not have the scars to prove it, but they are mine. Just as much as the hands under the gloves." Din softened, gloved fingertips lingering around the fleshy part of Luke's robot wrist, near the open wire access panel.

Luke felt himself flush, flattered by the way Din so deftly applied such a simple yet all-encompassing type of logic to find a solution.

There was earnestness to it, fresh and raw. A hopefulness.

“Hm.” Luke hummed back, letting Din’s truth wash over him and settle, clinking, next to the old one.

Perhaps Luke had been thinking about the robot hand all wrong.

He took in Din with their hands still intertwined in the space between their knees, a pang of warmth filling him.

Look not to the past, but to the future.

Luke smiled. How Jedi of him.

Din’s helmet looked back down at their joined hands, and then back up at Luke.

All of a sudden, Luke was very aware they were still holding hands.

Luke blinked, blushing a deep red, letting go at the same time Din did and pulling his hands in to his chest like they had been burned.

“Thanks for the hand-” “Yeah! Uh-”

[four-color-words]

Bailey Adler - An Intro

((Notice: I wrote this while extremely goddamn sleepy, so if I need to elaborate or make something clearer or whatever, lemme know and I'll try my best after I get some sleep))

So, I try pretty hard to keep this sideblog restricted to canon-only stuff. But if I'm gonna start talking about my silly little fanfic on here, I ought to talk about the oc it centers around

Takeoff is the first arc of Bailey's story, and serves as her origin. The front half of it, I like to imagine, takes place in the background of a Flash comic. The back half of it, which I'm currently writing, is a backup or secondary story. Bailey's theoretical solo wouldn't start until she takes up the Golden Eagle mantle, passed down from Charley.

(fun fact: I came up with her around eight years ago, and she's actually what led me to learning about Charley -- but I decided I would have more fun (and achievable) to try and explain how and why Bales was inheriting a mantle, than trying to come up with a new, unused name for her)

Bailey's a complicated character, and it's hard to summarize all the stuff she's got going on. She's very emotionally-driven, and she wears her big bleeding heart on her sleeve. She doesn't exactly like this about herself, but she's been trying and failing to change this for two decades; it's in her nature. And, really, it's the fact that her emotions do run so deep and strong that leads to her becoming a superhero.

Bailey grew up in a small Oklahoma town, and as far as she's concerned, the less she has to talk about that, the better. She moved to Central City to try and not only start a new life, but to forget her old one. Helping her best friend with the rent was a bonus.

Unfortunately, the past won't let Bailey just walk away. Bailey lands a job at a local museum -- no, not that one -- just in time for a haunted suit of armor, a cold case disappearance, and a whole lot of mystery to cross her path. As secrets start to rise to the surface, Bailey finds her own family history might just be tangled up in this web. And untangling it all might mean facing the parts of her past -- and her relationship with her mother's side of the family -- that she really doesn't want to.

Bailey discovers her great-grandmother, Rachel Faulkner, was born Rashel Tavros, of Thanagar. And while this does explain a few things about Bailey's own life -- in particular, why she's always been stronger and tougher than she wants to admit, and why she's always overestimated other people's vision and hearing -- it also leaves her with a lot of questions, and a sense of duty she can't quite shake. She's forced to acknowledge that she's not a normal human. She has gifts and abilities that set her apart from the rest of the populace. She has power -- and we can all finish the old adage.

But she also made promises to her father and sister that, on some level, she feels like she's breaking if she starts being a superhero. Reconciling that and dealing with the guilt, however, are just things she's going to have to do. She does inherit the Golden Eagle mantle from Charley, though I won't say exactly how or why until after Takeoff's finale gets published. (because otherwise I'm not gonna ever write it)

A lot of Bailey's character and story revolve around the ideas of breaking out of cycles of abuse and neglect, what really defines a family, and a whole lot of stuff I'm struggling to put into words.

But while Bailey has, like, so much angst and emotional turmoil, she's also just a big ol' goober. She talks to random pigeons and sings along to the radio while she does chores. She gives her friends stupid nicknames as a form of affection. She offers the neighbor kid cookies because she baked too many at three am, and then realizes how fucking weird that is as a complete stranger. She flirts with people and then freezes like a deer in the headlights when they flirt back. She spent the first twenty-ish years of her life dreaming of being Space Indianna Jones. She's a history and literature nerd, and she will infodump at you about the similarities between art movements across three different planets.

She's a giant dork, and I love her

[sokkastyles]

So that post is a reply to this one, for context. This is the reblog that I was talking about.

And this is a reblog of the above reblog.

I remember reading and deciding not to engage with the original post because I find the interpretation of Ty Lee as a super-smart weaponized femininity girlboss mastermind to be...annoying. Which is not to say that Ty Lee is dumb, but Ty Lee's constant adoration of Azula is a defense mechanism, not a manipulation tactic. It's the coping mechanism of an abuse victim, and Ty Lee breaking free to save Mai is something she's shown to be just as confused by as Azula, because it's a victim who's been finally pushed to the breaking point. I'm not trying to diminish Ty Lee's strength, and this is a minor nitpick, but I get annoyed when people think that feminine or kind girls have to be secret masterminds to be worthwhile. Of course Ty Lee is deliberately saying things that she knows Azula wants to hear for her own protection, but to describe it as manipulation implies that Ty Lee has power over Azula, when it's Ty Lee using a defense mechanism to maintain a relationship that hurts her. See Azula slut-shaming Ty Lee at the party and Ty Lee protecting herself by offering to teach Azula how to flirt, which Azula treats dismissively even as she enjoys the attention being back on her. Ty Lee does what a lot of people who are in these kinds of relationships wind up doing, which is give Azula constant positive feedback to avoid being a target of her, or at least, to avoid being a bigger target, because Azula is still cruel to Ty Lee, but less when Ty Lee is validating her. But Ty Lee admits in the comics that she is still afraid of Azula, so her fawning is less a manipulation and more a survival tactic. She's not trying to control Azula, she's trying to minimize the abuse.

Anyways, I am laughing at the claim that Azula said trust was for fools because she just loved Mai and Ty Lee so much and realized that was a mistake and is now lamenting it. You can only interpret it that way if you ignore that she said this in response to Ursa saying "all your life you've used fear to control people, like your friends Mai and Ty Lee." Azula is not lamenting the trust she put in her friends, she is explaining why she cannot and has never relied on trust, and justifying that in the face of the vision of her mother telling her what she knows is true deep down, that she drove her friends away because she never loved them. Controlling people through fear is what she has always done, throughout the show, in every relationship she has. Azula also further says to her mother "even you fear me," to prove this point. This also gets to the heart of why she could never connect to her mother and believed that her mother did not love her, because she believed that her mother feared her and therefore was someone to be controlled (which is why we see her as a child lying to her mother and resenting her mother trying to correct her behavior, and ignoring Ursa's teaching in favor of pleasing her more powerful father, who was the one with the control.

"Not one of them tries to return the counseling she gave them." Give me a break. Azula does not give counseling in "The Beach," she makes dismissive armchair analysis and then makes it about herself and how she's better than them ("I don't have sob stories like all of you") and then admits her own trauma in the least vulnerable way possible ("I don't care"; "she was right of course") while making sure she still keeps everyone else at a distance and under control. They don't reach out to her because she doesn't want them to and she's just belittled them in really cruel and personal ways. Like, tell me you don't have friends in real life without telling me. Or tell me you're really confused about why no one wants to be around you, if you genuinely do not understand why Azula's friends don't respond to her kindly here.

I like how this person does the "Oh, but they just don't appreciate what a good friend she is" and then backtracks into the "but she doesn't know how else to be" song and dance. I mean, sure, but so what? An abusive person who acts abusively because that's all they know how to do is still an abusive person.

And the claim that Azula was so blindsided because she genuinely thought she was being a good friend is BS, because we already know why she was blindsided. She tells us.

Azula: I never expected this from you. The thing I don't understand is "Why?". Why would you do it? You know the consequences.

Mai: I guess you just don't know people as well as you think you do. You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you.

Azula: No, you miscalculated! You should have feared me more!

And then after Ty Lee chi blocks her:

Ty Lee: [Runs to a shocked Mai, shaking her from her stupor.] Come on! Let's get out of here!

Azula: [Still on the ground; angrily.] You're both fools!

Which echoes the conversation with her mother later. She explicitly tells Mai that she was blindsided because Mai "knew the consequences." Not because she thinks her relationship with Mai is so strong, but because she thinks Mai is afraid of being punished for not obeying. This is exactly what she says to her mother, that fear and control are the only way to maintain relationships, and trust is for fools, echoed in her saying that Mai and Ty Lee are fools for acting out of love - Mai for Zuko and Ty Lee for Mai - rather than fear of Azula.

And the thing is, this isn't like, a minor quarrel where Azula just didn't realize what she was asking Mai to do might be something she would disagree with. Azula %100 expected Mai to sit there and watch her boyfriend die because Azula thought she had her that much under control that it didn't matter to Azula how Mai felt about it. This shows you exactly how much Azula values and cares about Mai as a person rather than a drone she can control. That is to say, not at all.

I wish we could move past the idea that Azula understands people because she's superficially smart. She's able to read and exploit people's weaknesses, true, but when it comes to what really motivates them, she does not understand at all, because she has fundamentally rejected love and trust in favor of controlling through fear. And that is impossible to do to another person unless you have dehumanized them first. So no, Azula does not understand Mai and Ty Lee, nor her brother, nor her mother. She doesn't even understand herself. That's the whole point, the whole tragedy of it.

Like, honey, Azula ain't gonna make healthy new friendships if we all just continue to deny why those friendships were unhealthy to begin with.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Because, Once Again, My Friend Promised Me Chocolate

So, in case anyone actually paid attention, my friend got me to submit our OC (the Raven Miraculous, Kwami of Fate/Destiny, sees the future) and the organization she came up with that went along with it. Well, apparently she’s done some work since then, and now wants me to talk about this AGAIN.

Why she doesn’t do this herself, I don’t know. Probably to watch me suffer.

SO

In case anyone missed it, my friend came up with an organization that acronyms as NOSPOILERS; the New Order Society Preventing Omni-Dimensional Information Leaks, Ensuring Realm Stability (she may have changed a few words since I last checked but whatever). The point of the organization is that they bill themselves as a secret society that observes the world, protecting it from “outside influence” so that the world’s “fate” isn’t “corrupted” by the choices of other dimensions/timelines etc, but otherwise they don’t interfere. However, in the typical fashion of secret societies meant to control the world from the shadows, these days they are less “protect the world” and more “use our knowledge to gain wealth, power, and privilege”.

Now, while they mostly do this through the method of comic book groups like HYDRA or the Illuminati, NOSPOILERS also has access to a powerful magical object that allows the holder to see the future (in my friend’s Headcannon, the Raven Miraculous). The big thing is, to use this item, the holder has to already possess some kind of Clairvoyant ability or potential. It doesn’t have to be strong or obvious, but they need something, otherwise they can’t use the item effectively. Like, they’ll still be able to use it, but it Won’t really be worth it - they won’t have proper control, what they see will be fragmented and disjointed, and the whole experience will take a massive toll. The idea is, people who try to use the item without some kind of Clairvoyant ability (born or trained) will get overwhelmed by the images of the future. Their brains aren’t built for it, and the strain can cause all sorts of problems, such as headaches, fainting, dizzy spells, fevers, and even delusions. Prolonged use when you aren’t built for it can and will eventually cause the user to either have their brain “shut down” in self-defence, leaving them in a coma, or they get swept up in the visions of the future, and lose all hold on reality. You can train for that sort of thing, but even then, all you’re doing is prolonging how long you can last using the item, and your control will be weak at best. In contrast, those that are born with some kind of Clairvoyant ability or potential, even if they never use or awaken it, are basically built to handle that kind of strain, and can use the item easily and quickly master it.

So, it’s in NOSPOILERS best interests to search for and find as many people as they can with some kind of Clairvoyant ability. As a result, they have loads of people who can see the future, even without the item, which just cements their power even more. Still, only the best Seers of each generation are granted the position of Oracle, the one who will use the item to assist the organization.

Then, you get one guy who looks at what the group is doing, and decides “Well, this is f*cked up.”, steals the item and flees the organization. Now, whether the guy lives or gets caught and killed is up in the air, but he manages to mail the item to a distant relative (for ML, they live in Paris) and then we get “teen suddenly has futuresight and superpowers!”.

Now, before anyone says anything about this kid immediately drawing a target on their back, apparently if you look into the future, this item is invisible. Like, you cannot use Clairvoyance or Scrying, or Divination, or any magical method to find this thing. You want to find it, you have to go the old fashioned way.

So, one thing my friend brought up, is that strictly speaking, NOSPOILERS doesn’t actually need the Futuresight MacGuffin. Like, they have so many people who can see the future, plus more resources and money than God, that the MacGuffin is a bit superfluous. But, when you have power …

Anyway, some random bits that I was told to mention:

- NOSPOILERS was not the groups original name, they’ve rebranded

- NOSPOILERS is run by a council, usually of twelve to fifteen members

- since their whole thing is information, they have a massive Archive that has basically all the information in the world

- they have an entire section dedicated to sports, and who’s going to win which trophy in which league, going the next hundred years. It is updated religiously.

- there’s another section dedicated to media and popular fiction. This is the hardest section to recruit for, because you have to be okay with the endings and plot twists of everything being spoiled.

- NOSPOILERS owns a stupid amount of casinos and the like, but most of its members never personally participate. They look down on gambling and lotteries as “too easy” and “beneath them”

Now, ML specific

- NOSPOILERS absolutely know who Hawk Moth and Team Miraculous are. The only reason they haven’t stuck their noses in is because they see the Wish as the “easy way out” (also an Oracle once had a vision of NOSPOILERS using the Wish and the world blowing up, but that has nothing to do with it)

- Actually, the other reason they haven’t stuck their noses in is Gabriel Agreste. They have the knowledge he’d need to save Emilie, but they are fully aware that even trying to blackmail or bribe him would end very poorly, so are keeping out of it (at least until something important turns up to force their hand … .)

- NOSPOILERS has an … understanding with the Order of Guardians. Whether this understanding will survive the Order’s “resurrection” remains to be seen

- of the various Miraculous, besides the Raven, NOSPOILERS would very much like the Snake and the Rabbit. The Snake they’ve never gotten, but there have been a few occasions they’ve snagged the Rabbit. They can never keep it for more than a minute. Usually, they’ll be holding it, when a portal opens, they get beaned with an umbrella, and the watch gets yoinked. This has happened so many times.

Again, we are never going to do anything with this, so if anyone wants to use it, go ahead!

-

oh! fascinating!

[whalehouse1]

The Separate RoTS Kon and Comic Kon AU

@thefaeriefeatherdark

So this AU is basically part of my own extended DC universe (we all have one and mine is still very much in development), where Connor (Young Justice Superboy), Kon (Comic's Superboy), and Maik (Reign of the Supermen's Superboy) all exist concurrently. Kon is the first clone but it is the one with TTK and Lex as the other father (all three technically are in this scenario), and it pretty much plays out with ignoring him getting erased cause I'm not playing that game with DC. After Clark finally gets used to him being around, they find out about Connor, who, unlike Kon, has more Kryptonian abilities, mainly what he has in the cartoon, but I think he deserves heat vision and ice breath because I like them and he deserves something too. Clark is a lot worse to him than he was to Kon, if only because how does Lex keep getting his DNA and Connor is a tad more standoffish and he didn't feel like he was ever part of Young Justice here because, well Kon was already there and you don't need two Supers (stupid hypothesis I know, but what can you do?). Also unlike Kon, he does age, albeit slower than most people. Young Justice does keep inviting him to join (the team being from their original run plus M'gann and Kaldur, but he thinks it's just pity and ends up on the Outsiders. He still ends up with M'gann though cause it's a cute ship to me. After they get married and Jon is around 10 (no Bendis time skip and the aging is different because otherwise Lois would be having Jon at 75, and a key point of this AU is to fill Ma and Pa Kent's outside table with family), is when Lex displays the newest "invention" of Lexcorp, Superboy. Now, I never watched Reign of the Supermen and have very cursory knowledge about it, so this will deviate a lot more than the rest. Superboy (here-fore referred to as Maik due to later reasons), is made basically act how the music industry used Justin Beiber when he was a child, and he is 12 because he looked like a 12 year old when I saw him. He is literally a marketing ploy for Lex to show off he can mass produce Supermen who are more obedient and humans can trust since they're American Made. Lex uses him literally to show up Superman and even has him fight the other three Superboys to show how much better the man made ones are, always during disasters. One day during a disaster, he fumbles it hard, causing more destruction than should have happened (ignoring that Lex caused the disaster in the first place), Lex takes him to the lab to euthanize him with a kryptonite syringe. Kara was having lunch nearby with some friends and hears Maik screaming and crying and excuses herself and busts into the lab and sees Lex trying to pin Maik down to kill him and she goes feral. She burns Lex's hand so he drops the syringe and then gets up close and personal. The end of the fight being that despite being at least 100' underground, Lex is lands outside the hole Kara made and she keeps going, horrifying the onlookers until Maik finally climbs out (only super jumping, flight comes later) and tells the crowd what Luthor tried to do to him, but obviously, a human being turned into a squeak toy by a Kryptonian isn't good for optics, despite the youth's pleas. Luckily, Lois and Jon heard the commotion and Jon throws a rock at Kara who stops and realizes what she's doing, spits on Lex, grabs Maik by the hand and flies off with him. Clark, Lois and Jon find them at the farm with Ma making them sandwiches to eat. Kara and Maik explain what happened and afterwards, Clark says they need a name for him if he's staying. Given he's 12 physically and less than a year old legally, he has to stay somewhere and since Lex has a boner for both Kal and Clark, they decide he should stay with the Danvers who are okay with the situation but scold Kara for almost killing a person even if he deserves it cause she was raised better than that. They say they need to name him something and Kara has been teaching Jon, Kon and Connor some Kryptonian and Jon suggests Maik El, which I don't know if there is a Krypotonian language that's actually made-

[bunningchaos]

Thanks for the 23 follows!

Do NOT claim Nuax as your own character, please. He belongs to me.

Have a drawing of Nuax comforting you when you're feeling low.

Honestly, I intended to have this done at 10 followers but I got sidetracked. And yes, I'm still working on the Christmas comics.

Though, if you'd like to draw your character over the 'Anon' figure, have these versions of the drawing!

It'll all be under the cut, oh and.. there's also a story written to follow with the image. Wayy below if you're interested in reading!

If you do use drawing to add your character or even yourself, please do post it and tag me and/or tag #NuaxComfort ! So that I can see your wonderful creations!

Unshaded

Pose Only

Background Only

Dodoooo...

Without further ado, have the story that was written within ten minutes or less. So do pardon me if there's any grammatical errors!

It had been about two weeks since you've been welcomed into this small yet lively AU that was ironically, named 'Safe Haven'. The one whom took you in went by the name of 'Fi' and they had also happily assisted you with settling in with the other residents alongside granting you keys to your new house. All within the time-span of a day

It was overwhelming to even process everything that happened, especially when it went through this quickly. You begun to wonder if this was a dream, unaccustomed to the warmth and kindness you received.

Of course, you didn't take things for granted. Trying your absolute best to socialize with everyone else and partaking in their shenanigans which was one of the most joy you've experienced. Albeit also getting into trouble and having to be lectured by Ctrin, when things got out of hand.

Yet..

Your chest felt heavy.

The moment you're alone, even for awhile. The uneasiness you feel within the back of your mind that you've been desperately trying to push aside, it kept on returning back.

The urge to cry, to just breakdown and scream. It gradually was getting harder to brush off.

You carried so much on your shoulders but there was noone to talk to. For, the fear of driving people away, forced you to keep your mouth shut.

"…Hello" A soft, unfamiliar voice soon spoke out from behind you when you were tightly gripping onto the front of your shirt. Your breathing unstable and heavy, a clear sign that you were NOT okay.

Turning your head towards the direction of the voice, you notice it was Nuax. The one small skeleton that was always lingering around town and rarely talked, with the exception of a selective few.

Even then, seeing Nuax taking the initiative to approach someone was.. rare.

So you weren't sure how to react to Nuax's sudden greeting, that and, the look in his eye lights. It felt as if he could see right through you.

"…Are.. you okay?" Was the only other thing that he asked, as he gently reached one of his scarf's end to wrap around your wrist. His voice sounded so comforting, causing you to drop your guard without realising.

As much as you wanted to keep your mouth shut, you couldn't. Tears was already starting to gather within the corner of your eyes as Nuax stared up at you worriedly. Soon he gently pulled you along to his house that was only a few steps away from yours.

Seating you down by the couch, the smaller skeleton sat down next to you and lightly tapped his lap. Giving you permission to rest your head on him which you hesitantly but gladly accepted.

This was.. nice.

You soon feel a blanket being pulled over you as Nuax begun to slowly but lightly pat your head, whilst a comforting warmth gradually engulfed you, allowing your body to ease up further.

However, you could've sworn you saw pink particles of magic but your vision was incapable of processing it.

..No, it was more so, you're refusing to acknowledge the usage of magic on you. You were relaxed far too easily, and you knew that.

This feeling of warmth and comfort, was one that you had been desperately craving for. You've always wanted someone to listen to you, for you to get the heavy feeling off your chest.

Without even thinking, you soon opened your mouth and started spilling everything. Everything that you had been bottling up until now

Nuax, didn't stop you. He listened to it all, continuing to give you soft pats on the head as you ranted....

[wolame-o-ccx]

would genuinely love to see your process for sketching out your comics!! ive wanted to make my own but i have never really figured out the process and end up overwhelmed- and you're one of the folks who makes stuff in a style that I kinda draw close to, and u do ur comics with pencil and paper- so if you wouldn't mind in the future, it'd be really cool to see how you actually get everything planned :)

This ask is so cute :( probably genuinely the biggest compliment I've ever received! Well, no waiting in the future! I'll tell you now what happens behind the scenes! :)

SO FIRSTLY, I'd like to clarify I am in no way a professional or even close to one, I never even looked up how to do comics, I just kinda do them and use what I've read from DC comics and Pinterest tips.

But! Personally, I find that making comics is fun and that's what I strive on. I won't lie when I say my comics are pretty bland, the surroundings are empty and lame but I think the character's expressions and body language make up for it, and especially the script. So altogether in this post, I'll be breaking down how my comics are made!

↓↓↓ if you're interested, open up the full post!

1 - Scripting

In both dialogue and character detail/placing!

I use a notes app for when I get ideas!

* I usually don't do specific dialogue, only stating the idea and then coming up with dialogue in my head, but there are some exceptions where I do write down pre-thought-out dialogues you can see in the examples I put below!

With the idea / dialogue in tow, we can go to character detail / placing. I don't know the actual word for it but basically how the character acts in a specific scene / dialogue!

Character expression is especially important when it comes to any type of art, be it comics or animation as it can tell a story with little to no dialogue!

* panels taken from 1 and 2 for context

From here you can clearly tell their expressions well! Be sure to exaggerate!

2 - Limit planning

With Tumblr's 10 images limit, as well as Instagram if you post there, it's important to note that limit and know when to end the comic with a good panel where it doesn't feel like it's supposed to continue UNLESS you're making two parts!

I can't tell you how many times I've ruined my sketchbook papers trying to get a perfect script but I've been doing it long enough that my brain has adapted to the limit and every comic I've done since adapting had been a perfect ≤10.

But even if you decide to go with two (or maybe even more) parts, you should make sure it ends well still! Like a book! Those spaces between paragraphs and chapters and such!

Take these for examples too!

* panels taken from 1 and 2 for context

So treat it like a book! I guess ?

3 - Panel placement

This isn't a necessity, but my personal way of drawing each panel is having it scattered around randomly around my sketchbook. I don't use strips or anything like that as it restricts me because using strips on paper is a whole lot harder than on digital. Because I have such a wide area to draw, I'm less restricted from drawing any excess things I want to add in case my dialogue doesn't fit the panel or so!

4 - Draw

Now to put it all together and make the comic! I usually already have my vision in mind so I can just go draw it without a light sketch layer, but I do recommend it!

What that is is essentially a sketch but drawn like.. your pencil is hovered above the page? Like you don't press down on it or something like that. Basically a guideline! So do that if you need it, and when you're satisfied with how it looks, you can draw it! And make sure it's clear!

After that, it's just picture and post! (Make sure you crop it right tho!)

4.5 - BONUS / TIPS

When I started posting Belos drawings, I never expected it to get any attention or even end up as a whole AU 😭 I just drew him in a babygirl hoodie and people ate that shit up so now it's an AU 💀 and because of that you need to prepare personalized tags!

Tags like pitmdau or sharing caleb au ! Very very useful for navigation

More important than tags, make sure you have a Masterpost!

I'm aware mine are unfinished and very messy and I'm trying to work on that right now but it's very difficult but people really need it so when making Masterposts, YOU HAVE KEEP UP WITH IT. I slacked of for ONE POST and now it's a mess.

Also another important note you can only put 100 links in one post so you have to make more Masterposts to navigate through the comics 😭

5 - Have fun!

When getting into comic making, I think really the most important thing to keep in mind is your enjoyment in making said comics. Sometimes some things can burn you out very quickly so when you're getting into things like this, especially when you're not getting paid, you gotta make sure you have fun doing it. It doesn't matter if it doesn't get a lot of traction or not, it only matters that you are enjoying making and posting them!

I've experienced MULTIPLE burn outs from making too many comics for my TOH AUs that at some point I just completely died and lacked motivation. But what drives me into making them are other people's enjoyment! Their enjoyment gives me enjoyment which gives me motivation to make more. Someday I'll know the AUs I've created will inevitably be over, at some point, but right now I'm just having fun with the small community I've built!

So make comics, and have fun!

I hope this was helpful in any way. I just want to clarify that, again, this is my way of making comics, and you don't have to follow anything I put into the post. I'm mostly hoping this was easy to understand as well. I'm more of a visual learner so making up the words to make this was kinda hard so I'm sorry if some parts didn't make sense. If anything, feel free to hit me with another ask or a PM! I know me not posting seems like I'm inactive but I promise I check Tumblr frequently 😭

Happy posting!!! :3

[maxwell-grant]

This feels like the kind of ask someone should've gotten around to a million years ago, but it seems it falls to me: The Shadow vs. The Penguin. Is there anything there?

Anonymous asked: How would pulp heroes like the Shadow or Green Hornet respond to The Penguin. Characters like Joker or Ra’s I can see them gunning down but that feels weird to do with Oswald “Pengy For President” Cobblepot

(Penguin by Mike Mignola. The Shadow by Lela Dowling)

It's amazing, really, what you've built here. You had a vision and made it real. Every Batman in existence respects you for it, Oswald. In fact, I'll tell you a secret…people assume that Batman's last enemy on most worlds out there is Joker. Maybe Riddler, or Ra's…but it's you.

See, you grow this crime empire until he has to deal with you. - The Batman Who Laughs #3

What there is here is a bit of an impasse, because yes obviously this is brutally, comically one-sided against The Penguin. Pitting most if not all Batman villains against The Shadow is going to be already one-sided in The Shadow's favor. Pick a Batman villain, even the big ones that make Batman the underdog like Ra's and Bane, and you can name a similar threat that The Shadow already defeated. Even if you don't count superpowered cheating with whatever abilities The Shadow has this moment, he's already dealt with most of everything they can do, he's beaten these strategies and puzzles and countless death traps at their own game, and yeah there's the fact that he's known for the fact his villains don't tend to come back for round two even when they don't die facing him. Villains that he faces tend to die specifically because they try to kill him and he returns their fire (it's important to establish here that, unless his enemies have guns drawn on innocent people, The Shadow rarely shoots first - they always have a chance to lay down their arms and walk away, a chance that most obviously never take), and Penguin's known for his unwillingness to go down without a fight and for his signature move being a concealed sneak attack, which means his odds of dying are near dead certain.

In fact, The Shadow already fought a Penguin-esque guy as one of his few reocurring villains, via The Wasp, Gibson's latter day attempt to make another Voodoo Master/Shiwan Khan. The Wasp is a "Napoleon of crime" whose body and strange buzz voice and antics and operations are themed after his namesake animal/insects, who uses a concealed weapon part of said theme (an electric "sting" on his hand powered by batteries on his belt), who connects Cranston to The Shadow and was also the only villain to figure out that Kent Allard is The Shadow. He was cleverer and more resourceful and harder to defeat than most of the typical Shadow villains, and to his credit he did achieve a thing nobody else really achieved in the run, and it didn't really do him that much (learning the secret identity tends to be a death sentence for vigilantes, but for The Shadow it's really not that big a deal, given how easily he can make new ones) and he still went out like a chump, and he's only really remembered as the less impressive of the reocurring supervillains, lacking the outright superpowers of the others. It seems like a fairly closed case.

Problem is, the more comically one-sided the odds are against Oswald, the more likely he is to actually win or at least survive because of that. Going up against people who should have his goose cooked, getting away with things he absolutely shouldn't, slipping away to survive and put one over Johnny Law, that's his thing, it's been his thing from day one. He is no stranger to dealing with vigilantes or people much bigger and stronger and scarier than him, it wasn't that long ago he was walking off getting shot at point blank and later faking his death. Penguin is no common criminal, and he isn't just a guy who's unusually smart and competent at it enough to waddle among supervillains either. In his narrative domain, The Shadow is unbeatable, but in his narrative home, The Penguin is unkillable, and not just because he's a comic book villain who survives by editorial demand. He has protagonist survival clause now.

In his ups and downs over the years, he survived in large part by becoming a fixture of Gotham, someone impossible to uproot from the setting, with his ignanimous transformation into stool-pigeon and banal crimelord in part a consequence of said survival. After more or less retiring from villainy, the next step was to very gradually join the likes of Catwoman, Azrael, Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya in their careers as independent Gotham-adjacent protagonists, which is why he now gets to have his own tv series (the second one at that, because Gotham exists and if it achieved anything, it was proving that there's an audience for The Penguin Show - and yes it still is very much shitty, but also not remotely surprising, that the instant they made a version of Oswald thin, that guy became a critical and fandom darling overnight). The Penguin wormed his way into becoming irreplaceable and they tried, they tried very hard over the years to replace this guy, and he's taken some brutal lumps and fell off very hard from the Bat-villain totem pole, but even that just enabled him to ascend to a different pole and one that makes it he can't really be just another gangster or supervillain to be knocked around, and one that's almost specifically built to ensure his narrative survival. Someone who serves the story better by being alive.

Has The Shadow ever dealt with a guy like this? Yes, yes he has. The Shadow is no stranger to criminal protagonists, or the concept of nuance, or redemption. He is certainly no stranger to the gentleman of crime who is more than what he seems.

The man who entered was tall and well built. He had the manner of a gentleman. He was attired in a perfectly fitting dress suit, which he wore with the easy air of a man of the world - Kings of Crime

The gentleman of crime arose, picked up his hat and coat and reached for his cane. There, his form obscured, The Shadow stood close enough to overhear what Graham Wellerton was saying. The gentleman of crime was talking to members of his mob.

What was Graham Wellerton's purpose? How and why had the gentleman of crime parted from his men? Why was he no longer engaged in robbery? - Road of Crime

To all appearance, George Ellerby was a gentleman; and he was actually qualified to prove such a claim. But tonight, he was to be a gentleman of crime - Battle of Greed

"I wonder," said Sandersham, slowly, "just how much The Shadow can do, or intends to do. Who is he, Krengle? How powerful is he?"

"No one knows who The Shadow is," replied the lawyer. "But he is death on crooks, they say, and he considers crime to be much broader than its legal implications." - Battle of Greed

There's about 5 Shadow novels that specifically touch on the topic of redemption. There are others where it comes up, plenty of others where The Shadow goes the extra mile in giving criminals a chance, and stories that highlight the lines that The Shadow draws in deciding how to deal with criminals (“To murderers, The Shadow dealt death: to such schemes (robbery, fraud, etc), he dealt ridicule.” - The Third Shadow), but those 5 make a focus of it. In all of those 5, we meet characters that can be called a "gentleman of crime". They are cunning, respectable-looking young men who use their smarts for crime, largely because of social circumstances that force them into using criminal tactics for dealing with life-consuming problems that the law has failed them in, and The Shadow assists them in addressing and rectifying said problems and turning their lives around.

In Kings of Crime, blackmailer and swindler Hubert Carpenter. In Road of Crime, the protagonist Graham Wellerton, "bank robber deluxe". In The Broken Napoleons, engineer Curt Sturley. Battle of Greed opens with George Ellerby, although he's not really the protagonist and is stopped before he commits his first robbery, and that story has two other redemptions that pull more focus. And in House of Shadows, Kid Pell, whose tragic demise opens the story. With the exception of Carpenter, all of these young men are given understandable and even sympathetic reasons for having become criminals, as all of them became criminals specifically because the law failed them profoundly and allowed them to suffer horrible injustice and ruin upon their lives and families, while shielding those that inflicted it upon them and provided no other recourse for them, and The Shadow goes out of his way to directly or indirectly steer them away from the paths they're walking.

Out of these, only Hubert Carpenter had a body count: he is not a murderer outright, but his past deeds had pushed victims to suicide, and The Shadow fully intended to let him serve his sentence in full. It is through the involvement of innocent parties (he took a dive to get the money to his family, he was betrayed, and his wife fell ill, making him break out of jail and desperately try to get the money for her treatment by robbing an old man who turned out to be The Shadow in disguise) and Carpenter’s own serious efforts to reform himself and assist in the downfall of his far crueler former partners that he’s able to redeem himself and face a new life (The Shadow delivers a government pardon so that he serves a month instead of 10 years).

“Somehow, he knew that The Shadow would not see the innocent suffer for the guilty.” - Kings of Crime

Kid Pell, who had already shot at least 6 people and killed 2 before the story began, wasn't quite so lucky. Dying of blood loss after trying to shoot The Shadow, his last words are a plead for him to get the guy who pushed him into this path, and keep an eye on his brother Denry to stop him from going down his path (which ends up happening, but The Shadow is able to save Denry in time).

"They called me a public enemy," declared Pell. "What else could I be, after my first kill? You know what it is to be quick on the trigger. That's the way I am" - he hesitated, his smile dwindling - "or was."

"I tried crime," said the Kid. "It didn't pay. But I was in it - deep. So I stayed. I've got no excuses. I'm not even blaming the fellow that started me in it. What I did was on my own. Understand?"

"Do me a favor," muttered the dying man. "Let me be forgotten - as Kid Pell. I rigged this hideout, so I could close accounts. Let me go through with it the way I want."

The Shadow's whispered tone gave agreement. Pell's face relaxed. In the glow of the lantern, his features lost their forced hardness. It was easy to see why he had been nicknamed the Kid. His age couldn't have been more than twenty-two.

Even his surroundings spoke a pathetic story. The shelves of the trailer were provisioned for a long stay; and among the canned goods were a few jars of homemade jam; probably the very sort that he had swiped from his mother's pantry only a few years ago.

There were books, too, that dated back to boyhood. Even when he had embarked on his career as a public enemy, Kid Pell had taken these along. He was looking at them, eyes open, the jam jars and the books, and he was smiling again, Kid Pell was. But the dampness from his dying eyes was forming into little beads, like raindrops. Suddenly, the Kid's lips stiffened.

A hand was resting on the Kid's shoulder. He could feel the power of its grip: the hand of The Shadow, merciless to men of crime. To this dying youth, murderer though he was, the pressure of that hand had the warmth of friendship.

"Maybe, Shadow" - The Kid was choking the words - "I ought to have met you before. Maybe… if I had-"

The grip tightened. It brought an end to regrets that could not be remedied. It steeled the Kid for what lay ahead - House of Shadows

-the words that The Shadow delivered held Sandersham rigid. Never in his life had the millionaire listened to such pointed accusations; such words that jogged his memory, nor such tokens of prophecy. "Rupert Sandersham," came the voice, "you are a man condemned by your own avarice! You are a master, not of finance, but of greed!"

"While your wealth grows greater," resumed The Shadow's voice, "your life grows shorter. As your schemes expand, your soul shrivels. You have physical comforts, yes"—the tone was mocking—"but who knows how long you shall retain them?"

"Your power, Sandersham, is not equal to the strength of the law. There have been loopholes in your schemes, that certain eyes may discover before your attorneys plug them". - Battle of Greed

Is The Penguin sympathetic? In some ways, yes. Is The Penguin redeemable? Not a question I'm remotely interested in handing a firm "Yes/No" to, because it's kinda both and neither, redemption tends to be conditional and fickle like that, and also irrelevant to the matter here: We've established that The Shadow (again, speaking for the pulp version here, it's what I tend to do) does not go out of his way to execute criminals, but doesn't hesitate to kill them when they try to gun him or others down. Would The Shadow extend The Penguin an olive branch and spare his life in the hopes that he'd come around and use his impressive intellect and resources and drive for the better? No. It would be useless. The Shadow doesn't deal with that kind of "hope", and The Penguin would not be interested in doing so either.

There have been occasions where The Shadow was caught in a bad enough situation that he had to momentarily pause the pursuit of a criminal, but The Shadow does not compromise, nor does he ever really need to, and he knows a true villain when he sees it. He is not keeping Oswald around as a informant, because he doesn't play by Gotham City rules where that seems like a reasonable thing to do. The true villain of most Shadow stories is always the person who stands to profit the most from said calamity, and most of the time they operate beneath suspicion. There is 0% chance of him underestimating Oswald the way Oswald prefers to be underestimated.

There are two ways Oswald Cobblepot would walk away from meeting a quick death at the hands of The Shadow. The first would be if he never killed anyone, or did anything that led to anyone's death ever again. He'd have to commit to undoing the ruin he brought onto people's lives and give back as much to the city and his victims as he possibly could. Such was what The Shadow did in Battle of Greed to Rupert Sandersham, a millionaire who got a kick out of ruining others financially. He is not the villain, nor is he a murderer, but The Shadow manipulated and terrorized him into making amends and repaying all the people he destroyed. These would be the best, most impossibly nice terms The Shadow could offer Oswald, along with him serving time and spend his whole life looking over his shoulder when, and if, he gets out.

"Look at yourself, Sandersham! You are wearing stripes! In front of you are bars! Beyond you, the outside world. Regard it as an omen, and make your choice. Amend the past; rectify the wrongs that you have done—or face the future consequences that your present methods will bring you!"

Rupert Sandersham was staring downward. His startled eyes saw the stripes that The Shadow had mentioned: those alternate ribbons of dark and light, that came from the setting sun. They had turned his gray suit into a convict's garb! Could it be that he, Rupert Sandersham, might find himself within a prison cell?- Battle of Greed

And that is not happening. There is not a single version of The Penguin who would accept these terms or accept this as a thing he's going to do. Short of the most kid-friendly media and even then, much as I argue that he should have rules of conduct, I don't think there is a single version of the Penguin who'd balk at murder or who hasn't committed it with little to no remorse. Oswald Cobblepot may carry much bitterness and heartbreak, but The Penguin loves what he is too much to accept being anything else. He isn't scared of any of these terms and would find them deeply absurd, because who is this, trying to tell The Penguin he isn't allowed to rob this thing, or kill that guy getting on his nerves, or ruin that rich asshole over there. The audacity of this laughing clown! As if he didn't have one too many to deal with!

The other way he lives, at least for a while, is if he turns out to be right about the way Gotham City works, and it turns out that he really cannot be removed from his position without far worse things growing as a result. I don't think The Shadow would have issues with the Batman villains individually, but neither do Batman or most superheroes. It's Gotham City that's the real problem here, and it's a problem that Batman hasn't solved in nearly a hundred years, and neither has Superman or any of the billion superheroes in that universe, a problem that will never be solved so long as there's a profit to be made on Batman. The Shadow can and has cleaned cities of organized crime before, usually by manipulating it's players into destroying each other, but even he has limits and Gotham City is no mere gangster-ridden town, much like how the man who claimed it is no mere crimelord either.

So the final matter at play here is whether The Penguin is right, and if so, whether The Shadow can afford to kill The Penguin, when there are other more pressing matters. Because the biggest reason Penguin's able to position himself where he is, as a necessary evil in-universe and a reocurring side character/even protagonist out of it, is by never being the nastiest or most urgently threatening villain in the room, and therefore always being the one that the heroes have to compromise with or have to defeat quickly to get moving. He has weaponized a Kingpin-esque idea that he is a necessary deterrent, because Gotham can always get worse, and everyone else who can take power in Gotham from him is much worse than him, and therefore you save the most innocent lives by allowing him to do his thing under a leash. Refer that line above, about how The Shadow will not suffer the innocent for the guilty.

There has been at least one Shadow story where he's dealt with this dillemma, in Face of Doom, as I elaborate here. The Shadow defeated the Face through taking the long way around, disarming his individual lieutenants, luring them into traps and disguising himself as The Face and all kinds of strategies necessary to checkmate the guy, but in the process also giving The Face enough time to regroup and strategize and target his agent(s). A similar thing happened when he had to take down Benedict Stark, and had to considerably slow down the operations to rescue Rutledge Mann from kidnapping. Issuing any kind of harm or death to The Shadow's agents guarantees him unleashing carnage on you personally, refer to Gangdom's Doom where he obliterates organized crime in Chicago in response to the death of Claude Fellows, but The Penguin can play smart. He can refrain from doing that, and buy himself more time, as The Shadow goes after those that think they have what it takes.

I think The Shadow vs The Penguin would probably pull elements from all of these stories I'd mentioned. If The Penguin is right, The Shadow would have to defeat, or at minimum stall, crime in Gotham City in a way that could then remove The Penguin from the picture, which means The Shadow would have to go through the rest of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Difference being, he's not going to fight those guys forever, he might not even fight them at all.

For The Shadow, he's up against a particularly smart, resourceful and powerful "gentleman of crime". One with personal tragedies and codes of conduct, one who might have even been like the ones he'd been able to reform if life hadn't twisted him, but who at present poses an active danger to the lives of people of the city, and stopping that is the bigger concern. He's taking down not just one crime king, but an empire that the crime king holds at bay, and god knows how many crime kings in the way, and possibly others who would see the innocent suffer for the guilty and keep this stalemate forever. The Shadow doesn't do stalemates, and Oswald Cobblepot is going to repent for all he's done or die, and nothing in between.

For The Penguin? He might very well be in heaven. He's dealing with death itself arriving from nowhere to give him the greatest challenge of all: surviving. Which just so happens to be the thing he does best and takes the most pride in doing. It might even be the kind of thing that makes him feel alive again. Facing down someone every bit the implacable wall of terror the Bat is, but who is less about the martial arts brute showdowns and more about god knows how many other subtler espionage chessplay and psychological mind tricks, and zero hesitation in putting a bullet in his head.

And possibly taking it's sweet time wiping out all of the competition, going through the long list of wiping out all of Oswald's hated rivals and competitors for him, and possibly a few unfortunate friends. Years, decades of playing the long game, gathering his assets, putting pieces in place, keeping his head low, letting the Bats and the others walk over him and forget he's there, and he's rewarded with the game of a lifetime! To be the arch-criminal who took on The Shadow and won! You'd almost think he'd have planned for The Shadow to come after him, and getting very angry if Batman shows up to get on the case to stop this because huur I'm a big selfish brute who wants to hog all the fun, duuuh Oswald you can do better, we don't kill around these parts Shadow huurgh, god, Batman, *waugh* can you BE any more of a self-important killjoy?

Sure, if no divine intervention comes, he's absolutely going to die, he is not walking out of this confrontation alive even if The Shadow has to go through Gotham ten times to get to him. But, you know, the real problem with Icarus was that idiot drowned when he fell, because he forgot to pack a bathing suit.

And you know what penguins do best, right?

*WAUGH WAUGH WAUGH*

[thr-333]

All in all, it got me thinking so much, did F!Leo never think that without him the brothers might have become completely different people?

Maybe they would have felt all their lives that they were missing Junior? They felt a great longing for someone they didn't even know. Maybe it would have changed them. Would they ever be able to forgive F!Leo for taking their brother away from them?

Yes I’m so glad you  brought it up because you see I have been doing some thinking on how this would actually affect the family. I did mention something about an its a wonderful life scenario. So prepare for my ramblings good citizens!

To talk about how the boys were affected you first have to talk about Splinter... Yeah he did not handle the loss of his son well at all. He spent a lot of their early years out looking for Leo jr. Who he could never find and eventually gave up, believing he was dead. This made him super paranoid and he will pack everyone up and force them to move every few months at random with no warning. Admittedly I haven't thought much about his personal arc that will come with time suffice to say he is even more neglectful than in canon.

Raph has DID in this au because I made an entire comic about it so clearly I’m obsessed with the idea. Raph as 3 alters Red(inspired by Red.Angel.Of.Preventing.Harm), Savage and Raph himself, Mind Raph’s role has sort of been replaced(we’ll get to that). Savage is obsessed with finding ‘blue’ he will front and go out scouring the sewers for him, during that time it’s not safe for anyone to leave the lair. Raph is very much like what he is in canon except he fronts less sharing the body between Red and Savage more often and is somehow more anxious and  pressured to protect his brothers. In place of Mind Raph he has a vision? Hallucination? Straight up Introject Alter? of Leo jr as a child who acts very bright and bubbly, a representation of the little brother he couldn't protect. Red has the same except his version of Leo is as an older teen who mocks him for his failings as a brother. His Leo represents the brother they all need, someone who could do a better job than him who could actually keep the family together. Red resents Leo jr for the hole he left behind in the family and his own projected issues. Feeling incredibly guilty for blaming a most likely dead kid for his own short comings. Red is the only one that ventures beyond the sewers after Splinter stopped, doing supply runs and the like.

Mikey in this is still trying to play the role of family therapist but is getting tired/burnt out from it. All his attempts, strategies and plans always fail or get shot down so he is halfway to giving up. His attitude is less upbeat because of this leaning more towards Dr Delicate touch. The only one really willing to spare him time is Raph who smothers him so Mikey keeps trying to distance himself. He yearns for independence(or to just get out of the lair away from the stifling negativity there) but he’s not allowed to go to the surface. So usually when Savage isn’t out and about he is going around painting the sewers. Mikey’s only confidant and support by their teen years is Leo jr. When every things too much and he’s alone Mikey will just go lie down in the room that they have always had set aside for leo and talk to their air. He likes to pretend Leo jr is the brother he needs that he never had, that believes in him that would help bring the family together for movie nights and to have fun.

Donnie is practically a stranger to the family. He never leaves the lair and rarely leaves his lab, too paranoid that someone is going to come back and take him or the others next. He spends his time making weapons and fortifying whatever lair they have set up in. No one in the family really understands him the way his twin would have and with barely getting to spend any time with him they don’t know how to accommodate him. Splinter picking them up and moving them every few months sets him off like nothing else not only is he out of the safety of the lairs he had fortified but he has to get used to a whole new environment, readjust with little to no warning. Which(speaking from experience cough cough) can be really hard, especially when you’re Autistic. He will often have mental shutdowns or meltdowns just needing to hide himself away under a desk or in a closet  for hours to calm down, this is a bi weekly event. He doesn't morn Leo junior the way the rest of them do, more so fears the unknown of what happened to him. That mourning period comes after they meet(because come on I’m going to make them meet at some point the fluff and the angst potential is too much) where he can grieve what could have been.

So all in all it’s going to be very hard to forgive the man that took their brother away.

[steeb-stn]

In the Hidden Places

Because if I can make healing from complex trauma fluffy you bet I will. Warnings for reference to threatened SA. Also at my AO3 here

Joel's kid doesn't laugh anymore.

He gives her a couple weeks before he starts trying - more than that, really. It was a few days before Ellie would do anything other than follow him like a puppy, eat what he put in her hands, make a beeline for the space under his chin the moment he sat down. Once she woke up a little bit, is when he started counting.

It was better than the almost infant-like state she’d been in ever since he found her, but not by much. She was like a whole different kid. She started answering his questions the first time he asked, but otherwise stayed quiet. Took watch when he asked her to, which he hated himself for, but with his vision now wavering too much to sight his gun, what choice did he have. At night after dinner, she sat quietly by his side until he told her it was time to sleep. She never took out her comic books or joke book. It seemed like the one thing she was really interested in was checking his wound.

She never looked up at the stars.

So Joel gave it a couple weeks before he decided it was enough time. It wasn’t like anything he had been doing was helping. You’d think with all the effort it took him to talk about it, he would have something to show for it. Simple words, a simple sentence: What happened? What did he do to you? And the hardest one of all, the one he couldn’t even think, much less voice. Did he- baby girl, did he hurt you ?

God. The closest he had ever gotten to such a conversation with Sarah was about stranger danger, and later on what to do if a boy ever got too handsy. That hypothetical had been mortifying enough for the both of them.

I was so scared , she sobs into his chest late in the night. The only time he sees his little girl come out of the shell she’s made for herself. I was so so scared Joel.

He starts with the ones he knows - as if he’s ever gonna forget that stupid diarrhea joke. At first nothing, then a flicker - more surprise than anything. A slight uptick in the corner of her mouth, before whatever is going on in her head steals it off her face pretty quickly.

She was trying , he thinks. She’s trying for me.

But recycled puns aren’t working. Looks like he’ll have to go straight to the source. Which is difficult to do on the sly, not surprisingly, because she still has eagle eyes on him at all times. But he thinks he gets away with it, saying he was just looking for bandages in her pack, which leads to a good fifteen minutes of her worrying over the good-for-nothing hole in his gut.

‘Not all construction is interesting, though,’ he says nonchalantly as he picks his way through the snow, her hand a warm pressure in his. He looked through that whole stupid book and found the perfect one. By now she’s used to him rambling about any old thing from his old life - hearing his voice helps her after nightmares. He’s been talking about construction for the last five minutes. She’ll never see it coming. ‘Some of it is boring, but some of it is riveting.’

He continues his march forward, careful not to glance her way, but letting his smirk show. After a few moments with no snort or giggle from his side, he looks over to catch a wrinkle between her eyebrows and a nonplussed look in her eyes.

Shit. Do they not teach them anything in those fucking Fedra schools?

Okay, so maybe not puns. They’re all terrible anyway, she’s the one who made them funny.

‘Why are we stopping?’

He tries to hide how much it pleases him that she’s even asking. A week ago she wouldn’t have. ‘Target practice.’ He holds out the marker and makeshift target, a pillow that he would keep if it wasn’t obviously ridden with fleas. ‘You want to do the honors?’

She looks around like she’s ready to bolt. ‘I-is that safe? Won’t someone hear us? People-’ she pauses, obviously trying to steady her voice. ‘There could be people around.’

Shit. You’re 0 for 2, Joel. Still, he refuses to let her be scared for the rest of her life. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, honey. No towns around for miles. And if someone hears us, we’ll take care of them.’ I’m not a fucking cripple anymore. I’ll protect you. ‘Go set up.’

She’s already improved from the last time they did this. He smiles at her, feeling her lean into the hand on her back. ’Target’s not too small now, is it.’

She looks over, suddenly all nervous. ‘I got a deer, you know.’ She busies herself with clearing the chamber and sets up for another shot. ‘Didn’t take it down, though. Fucker just kept right on going.’

Joel watches her, suddenly aware of the thin ice they’re treading on. ‘Did you track it down?’

Her next shot turns Asshole into a cloud of feathers. She never answers.

Joel didn’t think this miserable fucking winter was ever going to end, but what do you know. Patches of grass, mostly mud, pop up among the endless expanses of snow. A couple of days later and the usually silent earth is alive with the sound of trickling water, snow melt rushing over rocks and forming makeshift streams. And also mud. Joel always forgets how terrible spring is in places that actually get a real winter.

His next stroke of inspiration comes mid-flight, as he’s slipping on a mud slick. He could probably keep himself upright, but what an opportunity. He prays he doesn’t fuck up his knees or anything as he lands belly first in the mud, his little shadow letting out a cry before landing on top of him.

It takes him a minute to catch his breath before he can feel Ellie shaking on top of him. He turns over and rolls her off of him just so he can really enjoy it while it lasts, her breathless chuckles, the dimples popping out of her face. He reaches for her hands to help her up, but they both slip back into the muck, splashing it up on their faces. She’s outright cackling now.

There it is.

[danidoesathing]

would it help if i asked you to infodump on hyperfixation

YES THANK YOU

Ok so like. I'll be the first to say I way prefer the music video's version of the World Ender story over the comics. I really like the fire motif Cobb has and personally I think the pacing of the MV's story is better (in the comics he killed Winthrop first and then forms the World Enders gang to help track down the rest vs in the MV him going after the employees first and forming the world enders as he goes along and killing Winthrop at the end).

But. but. ok so his origin in the comic is the same except instead of a house fire, it's a sinkhole below their house. We know the whole Yawning Grave thing and it does later come back in the comic. Additionally, he had actually worked in construction for Winthrop and had actually bought the land from him (while the MV implies Winthrop had started the house fire to acquire the land). The reason Avery goes after revenge this time is because Winthrop had sold the land knowing there was a very big structural issues underneath it but never said anything. Which, while still very evil, is much less actively malicious than him actively setting Cobb's house on fire with him and his family inside. The comics also plays with the flaws in Cobb's idea of justice and if these people are deserving of his vengeance. Specifically, there's a comic page that has this as a sort of narration:

"I suspect there are some who say that Andrew Winthrop is undeserving of such a designation as 'evil'.

Does money lust make you evil? How about ambition?

What if you'll do anything to get it?

Cobb didn't ask for the land documents when Winthrop gave him the plot for his home.

If he had, he would've known about that sleeping sinkhole.

Does ignorance make you deserving?"

ALL OF WHICH. IS OVERLAYED ON THE SCENE OF HIS HOUSE COLLAPSING INTO THE SINKHOLE. WITH HIS FAMILY INSIDE. AND HIM RUNNING INSIDE TO PULL THEM OUT.

WHICH. FUCKED UP AND EVIL ACTUALLY???

and I'm so so interested in what is going on with him now. the World Ender storyline(s) take place in the 50s, and the latest point we see him is in a brief cameo in Vide Noir (which takes place in 1967). During this time, we know that he passes the leadership of the gang onto Alex. We have no clue 1. why he passed the leadership onto to Alex or at all and 2. what he has been doing in the mean time (is he still with the Enders?? is he still going off killing to try and satisfy his rage??? has he stopped??? has he chilled out or is he still violently angry??? did he ever find a way to undo his immortality???). And then his appearance in Vide Noir just. leaves me with SO many questions. What is he doing in the club at all? Why was he down there? Was he there at all, or was he a hallucination/vision/ghost? why did running into him trigger another time space jump? is it because he's inhuman? what does that mean in terms of his connection to Vide Noir? if he was a ghost/vision/hallucination, what the HELL does that mean in terms of how he's related to Buck?? if he wasn't actually there, why does Buck see him at all when he's got no clue who/what the World Ender even is?? did Cobb know there was something up with him and his fucked up stasis with the universe?? or his encounter with johnnie?? does he know anything about the events of Vide Noir?? what was he doing??? what does it mean what does it MEAN

and then like. what the HELL is the World Ender curse?? is it the specific brand of immortality he has??? Cobb is the only immortal character that we know of, but he's not the only undead character and Secret of Life implies there's more out there (though that could be metaphorical, but its hard to tell when Lost and Time in Space turned out to be literal). The curse is referenced a few times in random places but I've still got no idea what it means. and what the HELL does any of it have to due with the concept of the Yawning Grave. Yawning Grave (the song) is one of the few Strange Trails songs that both has no listed narrator but also with no clear connection to any of the established characters (both then and now). As far as we know, the narrator of Yawning Grave is a deity/force of nature of some kind, but not much more than that. But the comics imply that Cobb probably has got some connection to it. which. how??? in what way??? Is he the actual narrator??? is it just a random lyrical reference or does it have actual effects on the lore?? im so curious about him and even if he's gotten so much content theres still so much about the guy we dont know.