#-of plot progression

[qoldenskies]

April spending the night holding CC Donnie and rationalizing why her mom was wrong, it couldn’t have been the boys. Not her boys, and especially never to her boy.

HEY. YOU. JUST COMING IN SWINGING WITH THAT ONE HUH

BUT UGHHHH YEAH SHE DEFINITELY DIDN'T SLEEP. her confusion and fear was so obvious especially with how manic she was the morning after, her desperation to be comforting despite wanting to bombard him with questions. and yet she didn't have the courage to ask the other three, because if there was a slim chance that she was right.... she couldn't fathom it. ive always thought she sent one message to them that morning, and it was a lie that she didn't know donnie was there after he ran. anything to keep them away from him a little longer-- not knowing that saying that might have actually lead him into the jaws of death faster.

and she spent days after looking for him. she probably even skipped school in her desperation. her going to the lair was a last resort. she didn't expect him to be there, she just needed to get a little bit of the hurt out. to take it out on the people she knew at that point were responsible, as much as it hurt. she spent those days looking for him in the rain overthinking everything, overcome with numb horror at the realization of what she'd fed into. she came to a lot of conclusions that she hated to see proven right.

it was skipped over in miner's eulogy but i cant help but wonder what it must have felt like when she first saw donnie curled up in that cot. she forces herself to be so strong after because they all have it way worse (even if she is angry at them, of course she is, she still feels hurt and used and betrayed) but that sight had to have broken something a little bit. maybe she would have been able to do something if she didn't spend so long making justifications for them. maybe if she'd just known him a little bit better she would have been able to make true on her vow to protect him.

it was simultaneously reassuring to learn about the curse and the most horrifying thing she'd ever heard, especially since she learns after that they didn't tell her everything, only the things they could say out loud without hyperventilating or throwing up.

[bugblast]

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[bamsara]

I think that one thing people fail to understand is that unsolicited literary criticism coming from an online stranger who is reading with no knowledge of what the authors intended goal is, is not going to be received the same as say: the authors beta reader or friends who know what the authors intended goal and has the sufficient knowledge and input to help the author reach that desired outcome.

"But I'm only trying to be helpful" How do I know you have the knowledge and literary skill for you to be able to actaully do that when we don't know each other and you are essentially a stranger to me? Are you applying this criticism based out of personal biased experience and desire to see the story or characterization be driven in another direction or tweaked, or do you know the author's intentions for the character? If the story is incomplete, are you basing your criticism of a character on the incomplete narration with only partial information available of them or are you building up a report until the story's completion? Did the author provide you with the information needed to make a fully informed criticism?

Have you discussed with the author what their plans are or are you assuming them based off the narration, especially if the narration is proven or implied to be unreliable or missing key points of the plot? Are you unbiased enough to help them reach their desired outcome for the characters and story regardless of your personal feelings towards the characters/antagonists and setting? Can you handle being told your specific input isn't wanted because you're a reader and/or have no written anything relating to their genre or topic? Do you understand and respect that the author's personal experiences might influence their writing and make it different than how you would have done it personally? Do you understand if an author only wants input from a specific demographic relating to their story?

If it's for fanfiction or other hobby media, are you holding a free hobby to a professional standard? Are you trying to give criticism because you feel like the author has produced 'subpar job performance' of their fic? Are you viewing their work as a personal intimate outlet or something that must conform with mass media? Are you applying rules and guidelines when the fic is shared for simple sharing sake? Is your criticism worded appropriately and focused on the parts where the author has requested input on rather than a general dismissal and or disapproval?

Have you put yourself in a place where you assumed you have the input needed for the story to evolve better, or have you asked what the author needs and what they're having trouble with? Can you handle having your criticism rejected if the author decides their story doesn't need the change and not take it as a personal offense against your character? Are you crossing that boundary because you think you are doing the author a favor? Are you trying to be helpful, or do you just want to be?

I think sometimes when people hear authors go 'please don't give me unsolicited writing advice or criticism' they automatically chalk it up to 'this author doesn't want ANY constructive feedback on their stuff at all' and not "i already have trusted individuals who will help me with my writing goals and- hey i don't know you like that, please stop acting so overly familiar with me'

[cuttle-creatures]

Continued my indulgent concept work spree, this time focusing the momentum on updating some concepts from one of my projects (Wind Through the Grass).

[gideonisms]

sorry but most books "for fans of gideon the ninth" do NOT engage with gothic lit themes are NOT that funny do NOT have half as many bonkers plot twists and largely do not even have the same number of lesbians either. to be fair it's difficult to physically fit in as many characters per book as tazmuir does so I can excuse this on the basis that not everyone wants to write a 400-page space opera. but if that's not what you're writing then commit to writing something else!!

[nanamiskentos]

taglist open 💗 reply or send an ask if you wanna be tagged in this <3 posting in a few days ! pls make sure your blog can be tagged!

POSTED!

[starry-bi-sky]

Out of Context Stuff for a Danyal Al Ghul au i haven't posted - Pit Beast Danyal

Damian, 13: Look, Danyal, -- I am so sorry for everything that happened between us in the League, I hope you can forgive me.

Danny, 10 (allegedly): (has been secretly plotting to murder Damian this whole time, is still gonna do it obvs, but is going to make it significantly less painful now)

Danny: I-- of course, older brother. :]

--------

Bruce: what do you have there, Damian?

Damian:

Danny: (a hulking 10ft pit beast standing beside him, growling idly with ram horns gouging out his eyes and a second set of horns jutting into the air, spines down his back, and a long, spiked tail with an animalistic, skull-like face)

Damian, who smuggled him in (they've made amends): a smoothie, father

----------

Damian: this is my little brother Danyal, i murdered him when he was five. He festered in rage for the last half-a decade, took over a League mountain base in Switzerland, murdered everyone inside and then tried to murder me when I went to investigate with Drake.

Danny: hello!

Damian: we're cool now

----------

Damian: thoughts on resurrection

Danny, (a full ghost): i will succeed in murdering you if you try it

Damian: we'll put a pin in it then

----------

Danny (still instilled with League values): why don't we just murder him??

Damian, on patrol (Danny followed him): we don't murder people, Danyal

Danyal:,,,,are you sick, Dami?? Have you been possessed? Why not!?

(There is raucous laughing through the comms)

----------

Danny, five, pre-death: Dami! :D

Danny, dead, vengeful: Older brother (:

Danny, post-forgiveness: Dami! :]

-------

For some actual context: Danny is fully dead in this au, its a result of the classic DPxDC Demon Twins "death duel" trope but instead of Danny getting revived, he stays fully dead. Danny was five, Damian was seven. His ghost lingered though, and due to the proximity of the pits his ghost steadily absorbed the ambient energy it was letting off. The pits are not corrupted ectoplasm in this au, it's just liquid ecto.

Which means Danny's corruption from an angry and hurt little ghost boy to an unrecognizable monster is from his own doing. It's a result of him stewing in his hurt and anger for years, it physically warped him. He's very powerful. Danny can travel between League Bases but chose a small, out-of-the-way base in the Swiss mountains to fester in and then just. Never Left.

His influence steeped into the very foundations of the building, allowing him to transform and warp the rooms and hallways for his own bidding, Meaning he could turn it into a seemingly unending labyrinth if he so wished to, and block the entrance.

Eventually, blinded (both metaphorically and physically) by his own rage, Danny grew powerful enough to appear physically in the living realm and attacked everyone in the base, slaughtering them all and leaving the base abandoned. He attacks anyone who dares enter -- whether that be other league members, or the unfortunate hiker who stumbled across the base. His conscious is steeped into every nook and cranny of the building, there is nowhere you can hide where he can't find. Nobody leaves without his explicit say so. Nobody ever does.

Him appearing as ten years old before Damian in the skits above is his own physical doing. First it was to prevent Damian from being suspicious of him. Damian initially thought Danny was revived with the pits, he was too busy with his own training afterwards to notice that Danny never showed up again, and when he did notice, he assumed it was because Danny was too ashamed of his loss to face him. He'd always forget to ask about him.

Then it becomes a personal choice to appear as ten. It's how old he would've been had he been alive.

danny forgiving Damian is kinda for an offshoot branch of the main au. Whereas the main au takes the form of a ps4 first person horror game where Damian and Tim are investigating the Base for Plot Reasons. There's no sign of the rumored "monster" living inside until the end, where Danny, who was found inside the Base and has been happily "helping" them look around, manages to persuade Damian into splitting off from Tim in order to "show him something."

This something turns out to be Danny revealing that he never really forgave Damian for that fight, and he reveals through a horrifying transformation, that he was the monster the whole time. Which the game subtly hints at throughout as Danny's strange behavior becomes harder to ignore.

First from his insistence to only refer to Damian as "older brother" (when before the duel he always called him Damian or Dami), to him right off the bat denying the existence of a monster when questioned. ("There's no monster here, older brother. It's just me.") To other various things, like his knowledge of the outside world not matching up to modern times or things going on with the league outside of the base, or what happened to the other league members.

This whole idea was inspired by the song "Scylla" from Epic the Musical, with Danyal being the voice of Scylla as well as Odysseus, while Damian stands as Eurylochus. The instrumentals after Scylla says "hello" is him turning into the pit beast, and Scylla's "drown in your sorrow and fears" part is danny, as the pit beast, snarling at Damian while he attacks him.

There's a Good Ending, a Bad Ending, and a True Ending. The Bad Ending results in Damian being killed by Danny, it happens when Damian decides not to question or suspect Danny and treats him kindly. The Bad Ending is a cutscene, where Danny kills Damian quick and painlessly.

Meanwhile the Good Ending is Damian killing Danny. This is a boss fight, and it happens when Damian treats Danny coldly and suspiciously the whole time. Danny as a result, decides to make Damian's death painful as he had planned to, which is why it's a boss fight because it only causes him to double down on his anger.

The True Ending is Damian escapes with Tim. It happens when you treat Danny warmly up until the last minute, where when Danny proposes to Damian that he wants to show him something, Damian goes to talk to Tim and finally, reluctantly agrees that something is off with Danny, and that he'll be careful going in. It starts off with the boss fight until a third through, where it then changes to a cutscene where Tim manages to get the door open and Damian escapes out. It's then a chase scene down a never-ending hallway as the building actively works to keep you trapped inside. But you eventually make it to the exit so long as you avoid all the projectiles and doors.

Remember when I mentioned that Danny only lets people leave when he wants them to? That's where the treating Danny kindly throughout the game comes into play. It causes him to second guess himself and, eventually, reawaken and strengthen the love and admiration he had for Damian prior to his murder. It's why in the Bad Ending he kills Damian quickly -- because by then, he loves him enough that he doesn't want him to suffer, but is still so consumed by his rage and need for vengeance that he kills him anyways. That quiet part is what allows Damian (and Tim) to find the exit, because some part of Danny still loves Damian enough that he wants him to live.

The True Ending ends with a cutscene of Damian and Tim tumbling out into the snow/grass outside of the base. Damian looks up back to the entrance to see Danny standing there. But rather than a ten year old boy, there's a little five year old Danyal Al Ghul instead. He stares at Damian emotionlessly, blood seeping from his chest, staining his clothes, and little, bloody sword in his hands and tearstains on his cheeks, before he turns away and disappears back into the building.

[deerspherestudios]

What would have happened if on day three, when Mychael yells at us, MC had started crying? (Because that was my honest reaction lol)

You and many others apparently!! He'd feel guilt like nothing he's ever experienced. He'd fumble and stutter trying to apologize and completely forget to use his abilities to calm you down. Even if it did occur to him, your friendship with him matters too much at that point for him to manipulate the situation and get off scot-free.

If you were to forgive him for that mistake, he'd want it to really truly come from you. So no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times he has to say it, he'd apologize and apologize and apologize until he's sure you've forgiven him.

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[ginpotts]

DOCTOR WHO: THE NINTH DOCTOR ADVENTURES Big Finish Presents ✧ STAR-CROSSED ✧ 2024

[the-shotce-newsletter]

Scene from a fic I started. Selkie Soap is stuck as a seal and has a lot to say to Price, who’s hunting for answers. He can easily scoot and hop around, but why do that when he can make Ghost carry him like a sack of potatoes? Gaz is the only amused one.

[bethrnoora]

what is this gay little t-pose thing he does. hello

[chai-en-kaadhale]

the great thing about csm part 2 is that it actually addresses ""collateral damage"" which so many stories don't do to this extent, and its even better after part 1 didn't either. you get all of this main-character-centric tragedy, and all of these huge crazy fights- but when everything winds down, there was tragedy everywhere beyond the main plot- and a lot of it was caused in part by the main characters and their huge crazy fights as well. and this is probably bc of asa being the mc this part but csm is such a human story aaaa

[perplexingly]

I am now carrying two whole different armor sets, one to maximize defense and the other to maximize Leipa rep 🤭

[aurorangen]

A career change. It could be a good thing for Robbie. Earlier in the week, Renee messaged him about a new job opening for a forensic scientist company that she is connected to. He has a relevant degree and experience in the medical field from analytical chemistry to toxicology, it all sounded very exciting to him! Robbie mulled over his application, checking he had all the details before finally sending it off.

[mercutio-the-velaryon]

You would think Mel Medarda died in the season one finale the way the only discourse about her that gets popular in the wider fandom is about not only her actions in season 1 but a very specific scene in a very specific context like did y'all see her in season two or do you only care when she's a device for Jayce and Viktor's character arcs?