#(tbh I don't have a DC fic but I do have Opinions on allowing Bruce Wayne to love and be loved dagnabit)

[lurkinglurkerwholurks]

Satisfaction

Summary:

Selina had not been a little girl who dreamed of white dresses. The marriage of Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne, from Selina's POV. For @audreycritter and @frownyalfred

Selina had not been a little girl who dreamed of white dresses. She had not filled her idle musings with bouquets of flowers and tiny cakes. Her interest in diamonds had always been professional, not personal, waxing and waning in sync with whatever artificial value the De Beers were enforcing in the moment. A wedding had never been on her list of goals, a marriage even less so. She had craved luxury, security, independence, autonomy. Nothing she had seen as a child, watching forgotten in a corner, nor as an adult, peering through the windows of strangers, had indicated that marriage could be anything more than a gilded cage at best, an end to all she guarded fiercely at worst.

And yet here she was.

Selina had been determined to be present and fully engaged in the consequences of her decision. She had made this choice, herself, fully and of her own free will, and yet the muscle memory of her soul twitched, threatening flight at the first suggestion of a trap. If she detached herself, she risked reacting instinctively, spirit engaging in the gaps where the will faltered. So she had cataloged each moment, each sensation, carefully, a discreet notation in her mental dossier, a bespoke placard hung alongside the framed piece—the feel of her dress being zipped into place, velvet and lace pressed to skin; the clouded smell of the roses in the bower over her head, their blossoms full and heavy; the whirr of insects beneath the stringed quartet that beckoned her down the aisle.

It still felt like a dream. Selina felt herself doubled, reverberant in mind and body. She was present, present, present, and yet outside herself, forever echoing outward with a ringing ripple of awe. She smiled at all the right moments, true and real, and noted the faces that reflected their joy back from the seats on the lawn. She marveled at herself from afar. She spoke her vows, repeating solemn phrases of partnership, devotion, binding loyalty, and meant them even as her insides quivered. She heard them as if from someone else’s lips.

She was getting married.

She was getting married.

She was married.

Selina Renée Kyle, the Wayne silent but wrapped around her heart like silk, a band on her left hand and a kiss pressed to her lips. Married.

Bruce, as always, was her bolt, her fixed point as she swung through space. He had taken her hand in his at the altar and kept it through the ceremony, the vows, the walk back down the aisle, and the final round of photos that followed, letting go only briefly to sign the license. The prolonged touch might have felt restrictive, but instead it felt like the final check on her lines before rappelling through a skylight, that superstitious tug and the feedback of an anchor point that would not fail. He held her aloft.

Their rehearsal dinner had been small, intimate, restricted to the cherished few that knew who was truly getting married the following evening. Bruce, to Selina’s surprise, had chafed against the wedding pageantry his status demanded and had made a bid for the ceremony to mirror the dinner, held before no more than a handful of witnesses.

“You and me,” he had said, words breathed into the side of her neck. “The kids. Alfred. That’s all we need.”

Selina knew better.

Read the full fic on AO3

[burins]

20 Questions for fic writers!

@froizetta tagged me ages ago and i've been picking away at this as my arm allows! thank you :D

putting these below a cut because this ended up quite long.

How many works do you have on AO3?

67... not including some older stuff I orphaned. total (including the orphans and 2 fics i put on an alt) is 78! i've been on ao3 for 12 years, which is a frightening number to contend with.

What’s your total A03 word count? 304,059 (half of which was written last year....)

What fandoms do you write for?

Currently mostly DCU and subfandoms, but once a year I do Secret Samol for Friends at the Table my beloved.

What are your top five fics by kudos?

unfurl - DC, Superbat with bonus Timkon, 7.4k

Everyone loves a sex comedy (including me– there's another in my top 5 fics.) This one came about bc I wanted to come up with a shape for Clark's junk that wasn't your standard tentacle.

2. mission parameters - DC, Superbat, 33k

Alien fake dating! This was the first fic I ever intentionally posted chapter by chapter instead of all at once and I had so much fun seeing people's responses come in week to week. Also, this fic started as an excuse to write them fighting about Clark getting evicted and.... REALLY spiraled from there.

3. talk about all the good things (and the bad things) - MDZS/CQL, Wangxian, 6.3k

The second sex comedy! I just really think that "every day is every day" is a beautiful sentiment and not perhaps a feasible production if you are having Wangxian levels of sex on the regular. Plus a porn coda because, out of spite, I wanted to write Lan Wangji as a sub.

4. can I look the other way - MDZS/CQL, Wangxian, 2.7k

DEEPLY tropey Wangxian misunderstandings. The title for this one came from Westerman's "Think I'll Stay," which never ceases to give me post-canon Wei Wuxian emotions. This is the much much much lighter version of the story I'll never write about Wei Wuxian's probable mental state after the end of CQL.

5. everybody says - DC, Superbat, 2.8k

This was for Bruce Wayne Week using the prompts "inconvenient soulmate reveal" and "Bruce gets kidnapped," which I had great fun shoehorning into under three thousand words.

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

lololol. i've written two separate fics where one member of the pairing kills the other onscreen! so probably one of those. whetstone (the edeleth major character death) i think wins out because the murder, while deeply romantic in my opinion, doesn't actually happen in canon. (while samot doesn't directly stab samothes in fatt canon he sure is instrumental in it happening!)

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

this is the harder question! i write a lot of fic tagged "hopeful ending" and "ambiguous/open ending." i struggle with an unequivocal HEA! for a long time i struggled to write endings at all, and so i wrote mostly vignettes that just sort of faded out. i tell myself this is because life doesn't tie up neatly, and so neither do my stories, but also i am just bad at writing endings. probably one of my wangxian fics, tbh... i think give it all for a taste (sex pollen) or my remix fic (all the singing in the tops of the trees) have really sweet, happy endings.

Do you get hate on your fic?

I've never gotten actual hate directed at me! I got a kind of shitty comment on everything is new from someone who really hated that i had written a knightfall fic in which bruce pushed people away, but i think i've come out pretty lucky!

Do you write smut?

yes.

Do you write crossovers?

i've never written a crossover in which characters from different universes interact, but i did write a very long locked tomb/mdzs fusion!

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge! i don't think my stuff is popular or long enough for most people to bother lol. like, love and light, idk if my 30k fake dating fic that was also a trojan horse for me to talk about class and oppression and the sometime futility of individual action in the face of systemic injustice is going to do numbers on wattpad? maybe i'm underestimating wattpad.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! itsuki_minatsu did an amazing mandarin translation of take a pic, strike a pose. i wish i read enough (any) mandarin to be able to see how they did the group chats bc i love seeing how puns and jokes get translated! shoutout to translators.

Have you ever co-written a fic?

only for OCs! but god did we write a lot of fic about RP OCs, most of which never made it onto the ol' ao3. i miss them :')

What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

oh god. this is like asking a favorite child and also DEEPLY subject to recency bias. we've been rewatching nine's season of doctor who and i've been getting smacked in the face by the absolute nightmare energies of nine/rose recently. nine treats every man rose looks at like a stray dog she brought home that's pissed on the carpet. for their first date he takes her to watch the destruction of everything she's ever known!! she completely abandons her entire life to be with him! every other episode they are tearfully trying to die for each other and also nine is the most heinous bitch you've ever met <3

What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

hm... i'm not sure! i'm trying not to say "anything long" right now. my arm is doing better than it was at the beginning of the month but it's not up to longfic or really writing for more than about 25 minutes at a time. so it goes!

What’s your writing strengths?

individual scenes and character studies, imo! i am quite good at setting a scene and creating an atmosphere. also (i think) dialogue. i'd better be good at dialogue, since i've been doing the "rehearse scenes in the mirror with your characters" thing since i was about 12.

What’s your writing weakness?

plot! absolutely absolutely plot. i really struggle to plan out What Happens Next and how to get from point A to point B. this is almost entirely due to lack of practice; before 2020 i'd never written anything longer than about 6k, and never finished anything with an extended plot. also this is just something that writing endless amounts of fic is not actually the best tool to learn, because i'll always have the existing plot scaffolding of canon instead of really having to flex my plot-building muscles.

also action scenes, but is there anyone who doesn't struggle with those? sounds fake.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I wouldn't personally do it because I do not actually speak any other languages besides some pretty slipshod German! and nothing is more jarring than reading something and being like "that is NOT right." I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as the dialogue is actually correct both linguistically and character-wise, but I'd need a very strong plot/character reason to do it, and also an assist from someone who did speak the language!

i also think English-language fandom has a tendency to toss in other languages to like, prove a character's either exoticism (as in a Latine character randomly dropping in Spanish) or skill (as in a white character suddenly sprinkling Thai in an otherwise English sentence) and I think that can be pretty shitty depending on context. but both of those are writing pitfalls that you can fall into without ever using the language!

First fandom you wrote for?

Warrior Cats! I read some of it out on Staircast :) It was honestly pretty good for being written by a 10- or 11-year old.

Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I couldn't answer this question the last time I got asked and I'm struggling again! I think this one really suffers from recency bias. right now, for instance, i'm deeply enamored of my secret samol which will go up next week! but that feels like cheating. i think i shouted out a lot of my faves already, though.

tagging: anyone who wants to do this, but especially @try-set-me-on-fire and @timetoboldlygo!