#anyway i've had this wip in my files for who knows how long have at ye m'dudes

[daydreamsandcrashingwaves]

KICTTC 5

I'm BACK helloooo! Oh my goodness friends! I have so much to tell you all! So I kinda was collar grabbed by this story so my edit of chapter 4 is SO different from what I posted here, SOOOOO I'm posting a bit of the edited Ch4 so no one misses out on plot! ahhh I've been so excited to share this all with you!!!! Transference chapter 3 is in the works as well as a secret WIP! I really wanna focus of my first two stories though so Idk when that will be up or what an update schedule might look like.

Anyways the Angst is strong, the trauma and body horror is as strong as the blasphemous tea I brew, read at your own leisure I aint yo mama lol

Stay safe, give yourself grace, take your meds, get some sun, burrow in a blanket nest, drink water and eat a snack lovelies!

~Ren

Once Danny makes a decision he throws himself in head first, this will be no different. Danny has to start at the beginning. He must tell them everything to have a hope of them understanding how Danny ended up dropping through a portal to his brother’s side. For… their family to understand what true danger hunts him even now.

Dick sips his cup of coffee only to look at it betrayed when it’s bitter and cold. He has been in Bruce’s study watching the live feed of the recovery room for hours. He managed to drag himself to bed when Alfred had insisted but his dreams had been plagued with Danyal trembling on the floor, knife hilt deep in his small neck, the sight of them in the doorway had made him panic and then he was bleeding out, his breath gurgling in his throat as he died. It was an awful way to wake up and he couldn’t even go check on Danyal in person! Damian had cashed in a lot of the blackmail he’s kept on them to keep them away. While Dick was proud of his little brother’s emotional growth, seeing their youngest in person would go a long way for Dick to shake off his nightmare. He is a bat though so he will endure, especially because this involves his family, his brothers. 

As the sun started dipping below the horizon behind the curtains Tim walked into the study with two large cups filled to the top with coffee, one with a ton of sugar and cream the other plain black coffee, “Awe Timmy! You brought me coffee!” Dick snatches the plain one up with a smirk. 

Tim just grumbles at his grabby hands and relinquishes the cup. He shuffles over to the couch and pulls out his laptop to work on something- Dick isn’t sure where Tim had managed to safely carry the computer with two fresh coffees- and promptly ignores the others as they file in the next ten or so minutes. Judging by the dark circles under everyone’s eyes, sleep was hard to come by. 

Bruce is slumped into his chair watching the twins. No one breaks the silence. Dick eyes Jason from where his brother has propped himself against the wall out of the way Their father’s shoulders are tense in anger. So Talia is probably giving him the slip. He can’t help but feel resentment for the woman who keeps secrets that hurt his family. She knows that people don’t always stay dead. When Jason died, the only reason Dick had to face it, recognize that his little brother was dead was because they had his body as sure proof he had been murdered. Dick has seen many times how Bruce grieves and it’s never good. Adding in a twin? Bruce is holding himself together with sheer will power and meticulous training. Bruce might be almost impossible to read but he was the first boy to be adopted. He has more Bruce experience than anyone else in the family but Alfred. He can see the cracks. 

Turning back to the screen Dick lets out a little coo at the image. Damian is awake and is looking at Danyal like he’d disappear from under the blanket they share. The boy carefully extracts himself to use the restroom that’s tucked away in the corner. When he comes back onto the screen he is changed into his sweatpants and a t-shirt Dick recognizes as his own. He also spots a change of clothes for Danyal in his arms, which he sets on the side table next to the bed before Damian goes around refilling the water pitcher and glass to be ready for use, setting fresh towels out. 

Turning his attention to the younger boy, he can see how sickly the boy is when they’re side by side to compare. His pale skin shows off the dark veins underneath, his cheeks are caving into his face, all his baby fat eaten away, dark bruises under his eyes, and with how injured he was… it’s not telling a pretty story. Dick is confident that if Danyal hadn’t dropped out of the rafters in that warehouse they’d never know he could’ve been out there. He desperately needed help even if he hadn’t realized it yet. Bruce and Dick watch Damian crawl back into bed, Danny doesn’t wake but he does turn towards where Damian has frozen owl-eyed. An arm snags the bottom edge of Damian’s shirt and like a signal the rest of his limbs follow to entwine them together. It’s very cute. With a smirk Dick takes out his phone and snaps a quick picture. It’s unlikely to truly upset Damian since it’s probably the only picture that they have of the twins together right now, but however Damian responds when he knows the picture exists will be satisfying. 

“Are we gonna get on with it or just sit in silence with our thumbs up our asses?” Jason glares, looking significantly more tense. He stares down the room while crossing his arms across his chest. 

Dick sees Bruce’s shoulders square up like he’s bracing for a physical punch instead of the verbal jab. Batman has an almost obsessive need to know everything he can about a situation, it was one of his many lessons that they as his children made into muscle memory. Knowledge made carefully crafted contingency plans that kept their family safe on and off the streets. Something to hold, to have in reserve for when they need it. To be thrown so many unknowns in the shape of a brother was unsettling them all. 

“Jason.” Dick throws him a disappointed look from where he stands by Bruce, placing a hand on his shoulder to diffuse the argument that would shortly explode. “Danyal hasn’t been conscious, he hasn’t had the chance to explain anything yet, has he?” He raises his eyebrow at his brother. The family might not always reach an agreement on, well most things, but Dick knows his younger brother cares. He does. He won’t admit it but he’s here. Red Hood sticks to Crime Alley, looking after his people and- though he won’t claim them- his kids. One glance at Danyal’s wounded, still form was all it took to gain his loyalty. Red Hood liked to take his aggression out on those who disrespect his claim. Jason’s impulse to run off and hunt the monsters who could harm a child this way was poorly hidden. Dick understood the feeling so he didn’t push further.

Jason sneered at his words but didn’t bite back, just turned his impatient gaze towards Tim. “I’m sure Tim has been doing more digging than sleeping.”

Bruce inhales sharply drawing all of their attention. He’s looking at the monitor, hitting the unmute, Damian’s voice floods the room. “I simply meant you only have to tell me what has happened since we were separated… Once, here. I-We had thought you would prefer what privacy we can afford while we determined who had made the grave mistake of harming you. The family, while well intentioned, can be overwhelming. It is difficult gathering everyone and having them sit quietly for extended periods of time and our family is… large.” 

Damian’s description brought a small smile to Dick’s face. Danyal’s quiet reply dimmed the edges because he sounded so young. 

The whole group shifted and was laser focused on their new family member. Dick can’t think of any way to describe this whole situation as wrong as he took in what he could see.. It had nothing to do with Danny himself, or maybe it was more accurate to say whatever made his newly claimed baby brother look like that was what was firing off all his finely honed warning bells. A glance around at the others makes it clear they’re all, for once, on the same page.

If Bruce’s glare could kill the poor monitor would’ve been smoking at this point. Danyal was clearly at the end of his rope. Dick will admit as much as it irks him Damian was right to sequester the recovery room and keep Danyal in a calm area. They watch in horror as Danyal starts to speak. He was hesitant and nervous at first but slowly gained confidence when Damian didn’t react adversely. 

The rest of them didn’t have to restrain themselves. 

  “What the actual fuck?” That’s Tim’s angry voice, Dick shutters. He sounds like he’s already started on researching his shit list by the furious tapping that comes from the couch. Drs Fenton, the Ghost Investigation Ward, and Vlad Masters can’t possibly know what is coming for them. Dick isn’t sure whether to step in when Jason sinks down into the couch next to their younger brother and they immediately start whispering between themselves. 

He decides after a long look at the twins murmuring to each other that he would rather check on Bruce. “B?” 

The man that stands firm against Gotham’s most unsavory rogues, looks back at him lost. His eyes get drawn back to his sons on the screen, “He’s so small Dick. I-” It’s rare Bruce breaks in composure and Dick’s chest squeezes. His father looks haunted. 

“We’re here for him now, B.” He says gently. There are no words he could say that can erase what is already done. 

They listen to Tim and Jason in the background while watching Damian help Danyal get out of bed. Once on his feet Danyal waves his twin away. He’s weak and shaky but they breathe a bit easier when his legs don’t give out underneath his body weight. The short walk to the bathroom door seemed to have winded him. Danyal reaches for the wall and presses into it while he pauses. And pauses. 

Damian hasn’t rushed to his side so Dick tries not to panic. He probably needs a moment to gather himself. “Do you think we need to send Alfred down?” He asks Bruce. 

“What?” Tim and Jason both looked up at him in tandem. 

“Danyal! He was- well he is- fine. But look! He’s all hunched like he can’t breathe right? Why is Damian just watching?” Dick frets wringing his hands.

Attention diverted from their plans of destruction the two leave the couch and crowd around Bruce’s desk. 

“Oh fuck!” Tim curses, roughly rolling Bruce’s chair away from the keyboard. “I don’t know how they did it but I think the feed was paused, or spliced or looped. I’m trying to override it- Ah! I got it!” 

The feed clears and they all blink at the empty room. The bathroom door is open and Danyal’s things that were by the door are gone. 

Bruce jumps out of his chair. “What were they doing right before?” 

Tim pulls up the saved file and finds the moments right before the glitch. “They’re hugging?” A few lines of code and Tim has the background volume boosted. A hushed conversation in Arabic reaches their ears. 

“Okay Danyal, I understand and will help you,” Damian studies his brother for a moment, “how can I help you best in this moment Danyal, what is it you want.” 

They watch Danyal look around at the room, fear leaking in now that he’s not focused on the boy with him. “I can’t be here. I won’t heal.”

Bruce flinches like Danyal had hit him.

They embraced, and whatever else was said was too muffled to pick up.

They watch entranced, like a bruise you can’t help but press on, as the scene plays out and ends with Danyal leaning against the wall. 

“They can’t have gotten far, the demon brat wouldn’t risk hurting his precious twin, Dickie-Bird and I can fetch the chicks that flew the nest.” Jason sighs.

Bruce’s phone rings and they all look at it with reluctance. That’s Oracle’s ringtone so it’s important. Dick swipes the device and answers with a quick, “O, we’ve got a situation, please tell me this is important.”

“Yeah it is,” Barbra agrees, “if you guys were gonna patrol why wasn’t I looped in, huh?” 

Dick exchanges a confused look with the others. “Uh no, O, we agreed no patrol tonight, Black Bat, Signal, and Spoiler were our covers.”

“Then why is the Batmobile headed towards the edge of town?” 

They, with years of experience fighting side by side, spring in sync for the hidden entrance and pile into the elevator to the cave to change and to track down their brothers.

~~~~~~~

Gotham was unusually muggy this evening. Bruce could feel the sweat drip down his scalp and his suit was already damp. Breath blazed through his lungs yet brought him no warmth. He had to suppress his instinct to shiver. Fear was all he could feel. It was bone chillingly familiar. Nothing like Scarecrow’s toxin yet he was still sinking deeper into glacier littered water. As Batman, Bruce has taken many hits, faced the cruel underbelly of Gotham from the shadows and had said enough. Birthed from vengeance and relentlessly courting justice, he gets back up, keeps moving, doesn’t stay down even when he probably should. No one else had managed to stand against the city’s rogues. Every night he embraces their seething rage that blistered the streets and exploded buildings. Batman turns towards danger, not away. He is the shield that protects his city's people from the impact the best he can. It’s never enough. Batman has flung himself head first into a race that had long since started. 

In the rare hours he is alone surrounded by the soft glow of the Batcomputer and the quiet rustling of sleeping bats he can admit, those first years, he had enjoyed the vicious fights. Tangoing with death each night. He was entranced, he would dance until the curtain dropped. It was a destructive cycle he couldn’t escape. As he’s aged his compulsion to run off has cooled, and it was only after the first time Dick got more than just a few bruises did he realize the true cost. Even if he couldn’t stop them, perhaps he should’ve tried harder to work with his children to ensure their safety.  A family of vigilantes was a double edged blade. His curse to bear. The curse he spread. Every night his heart is split into pieces and goes with them as they stalk their prey from within the shadows. His children amaze terrify him in how they’ve all risen to fight back the miasma that threatens to swallow Gotham whole. 

He doesn’t know Danyal, has never learned what his favorite breakfast is or seen him off to school. They have never shared late night training sessions. His youngest has never fallen asleep sequestered away in his own world working on a case and for Bruce to find him and tuck him into bed like he has with all of his children at least once. No. He was never given a chance. Danyal’s existence was hidden from him. His death was a secret Damian was manipulated into thinking he had to carry the weight alone. And people believed Batman to be some sort of legendary detective. If Bruce was less controlled he might scoff at the thought. He missed things, big and small, all the time. Most often it was his children that were affected by his carelessness, his lack of understanding. 

He knows what it is to lose a son. In death and because of his own parental ineptitude. Bruce knows what it is for his world to spin out from under his feet and to let his rage blindly guide him. Bruce risks a glance at Jason, his walking, talking, breathing miracle. Why couldn’t he just say that to the person who needed to hear it. Jason had died, it was awful, truly awful. As an adult he has never felt so lost. Jason was only a child. A brilliant, bright, life snuffed out in the cruelest way only for some universal hiccup to thrust his soul back into body and for Talia to pick him up. They’ve never talked about the Y-incision that spans his entire torso. Jason hadn’t intended for him to see it. Bruce doesn’t know who is responsible. He doesn’t know if they dare breathe another breath on Earth. He’s afraid to ask. He’s afraid of what he’ll do if they aren’t already dead. No, the only thing he knew about it was what Jason had deliriously shared with him while sick with whooping cough. The cut may have happened but that was as far as they got. His ribs remained intact, his organs undisturbed. Bruce has to trust Jason told him the truth. Bruce hadn’t had the strength to imagine alternatives.

He has no choice now. Whatever Danyal’s journey has been, wherever he’s been. Bruce despairs that his youngest’s life journey has been too similar to Jason’s. Danny had listed off to Damian the multitude of injuries he had and Bruce just knew. Two of his sons have been dehumanized, valued as objects for other’s use, to state their curiosity. His youngest didn’t just get cut into, as despicable as that already was, no, he was awake, aware, alive as some sick fuck rooted around behind his ribs. (Half-alive. His gut rolls at the implications yet it brings none of his usual suspicions to draw his attention to what his son was hiding. Only he wasn’t hiding, not from the Wayne family. No, he had shared everything with very little prompting from Damian. Danyal was running from them) Bruce could only stare at the screen in his office in horror. How fast did his regenerative ability work to regrow his harvested organs? Did he have to break wrongly healed bones and had to hold them in place until they healed enough for him to escape or did his bones snap forcefully into place on their own-    

It’s a race against time now. Danyal is in no condition to be on the run. It would crush him to send him away but Bruce would. He can find a secure place away from him for his son if that’s what it took to make him feel safe enough to rest. Recovery needs to be his number one priority, he had been slowly relaxing with Damian yet as soon as he wasn’t disoriented he fled. What does that say about how he thinks they’ll treat him? What does it say about Bruce that Damain felt he could better protect his twin alone?

Bruce forces himself to reach for his comms and connects to the main comm line they use for patrols. “Everyone, change of plans, keep your eyes open for both boys. They fled from the cave in the Batmobile, hail the line immediately if they’re sighted, I don’t expect Robin to linger once it stops.” Bruce internally curses at himself that he didn’t think to have some sort of code for his youngest. He’s known for creating contingency plans for his contingency plans, yet he is not prepared for this. He could’ve never prepared himself for the knowledge he had not one blood son but two, twins. He couldn’t be too revealing incase someone was listening. “We’re in pursuit of the Batmobile now. Remember the boys are both League trained, Robin likely will have some tricks he’ll play.. The boy’s full capabilities are still unknown and he is heavily injured, proceed with caution, the boy is likely running on instinct, resistance is expected. We want to avoid making them feel cornered.” His tone is tight with worry, He doesn’t blame Danyal for being suspicious. He may be their father, but as far as he knows it wouldn’t be safe. Well, Bruce can’t blame either of them, they’re children, his children. He will blame their mother though. “We want them to get them home safe with no further injuries.” 

Some very distant part of him is proud of Damian for unequivocally having his brother’s back, if only they could bond over things that didn’t shave years off his life. Bruce has never been more stressed. Some day soon he’ll just have to embrace the grey that was sprouting in his black hair and give Alfred relief from helping him hide them.

“Copy that B-man! Our eyes are peeled!” Spoiler responds “I’m currently in Burnley, Orphan’s got Somerset covered and Signal is in Old Gotham! If they’re out here we’ll find them.”

“From what Oracle sent, I think I should be able to pick something up with my powers, I’ll keep trying while we move, B.” Signal pipes in.

“Thank you Signal.” Bruce is flooded with relief. He really is lucky to have them, there’s no one else he’d rather have at his back. They’ve all grown into their own. He tries not to sigh. 

Discovering the twins missing had sent them scrambling, even Jason had looked worried and tucked away his instinct to question him or to argue, his second son had simply followed them down to the cave. At this rate he may get an ulcer. He had felt panic steal his critical thinking, as he led his boys south towards where the Batmoblie was speeding away faster than they could grapple. He had to find them. Gotham isn’t safe at night and Danyal’s movements will be restricted if he deems it important not to rip his stitches. 

Moving through the air usually calmed him but tonight grappling wasn’t moving him around fast enough. Taking the Batmobile was smart of his sons, he begrudgingly had to admit, not only was it faster, the boys would be hidden inside. If Robin had driven his bike he’d have superior maneuverability even though Batman could’ve followed them faster, but if the boys had impacted something during a high speed chase to flee? They’d both be thrown. Danyal is already severely injured anything additional.. Bruce couldn’t make himself focus on that. 

His Trouble Twins probably planned it this way to slow them down. To throw them off their tracks. It was working, the boys had a 10 minute lead on their group. They’d left as soon as they had suited up but they still were too far out of reach. Away from the protective shadow of his cape. He couldn’t protect them now that they left the safety of the manor. Jason was cursing underneath him on the street racing past buildings on his bike, he was slightly ahead of Batman and Nightwing’s position in the air, on the bike next to him Tim was working with Barbara to try and get eyes on the boys. Quiet suggestions on what to look for. Shadows that move unnaturally, flashes of color there and gone, how they needed an algorithm up to analyze all of the feeds simultaneously. With the many cameras in Gotham-more than half Bruce had bought for the city to install- they wouldn’t be so hard to find. They shouldn't be so difficult to find, but Damian was particularly slippery when he put in the effort. Bruce glanced at his eldest besides him. 

Dick was one long string pulled too tight. He, of course, was still chatting happily with Barbara but his smile was strained at the edges, his movements too careful and precise. He hasn’t joked once. The possibility the man would snap increases the longer the twins are missing. It’s rare to see Dick outwardly expressing something other than the pure sunshine and patience. By the time Jason had come around he had curbed most of his bloodlust, it was a faint memory by the time Tim weaseled his way into their lives. It reminds Bruce too much of Brucie. The persona that he developed to hide from the vultures that would’ve taken everything from him as a child when tragedy struck. Before Bruce had decided to be active in Gotham’s social scene he knew it was better they underestimate poor orphaned Bruce Wayne. Brucie hid Batman, a shield to protect his family from those who would expose their secrets. He was necessary, even if Bruce felt suffocated most of the time. Was Dick hiding from him? 

He has to suppress a shutter. All his children to some degree, whether on or off the streets, have adapted to Batman’s mannerisms and habits. It was essential to survive facing the threats they do. Dick though fell more into Bruce’s habits. His eldest son, who with a smile looked after his siblings while Bruce was distracted by some crisis or another.They both often blamed themselves for things they couldn’t stop or foresee. That heavy invisible weight that sits on their shoulders because they claimed it. Bruce knows that he’s failed his children, Dick.. Dick in particular has had to step up on his behalf to smooth things over between family members. Forced to become another parent to the kids he brought home. It was never Dick’s responsibility and it’s taken time and a lot of effort but Bruce is making steps forward, trying to stop repeating the same mistakes. It was only Alfred’s guidance and help raising the boy that he excelled instead of crumbling under Bruce’s incompetence. Bruce was trying though. Even if it was hard to talk about casually, he was in therapy, it was.. Helping. He’s not putting so much of himself onto his children these days. He’s been processing his thoughts and feelings instead of bottling them inside and letting his anger rule him. 

Words though, they still escaped him on the best days. Today was shaping up into an absolutely horrible one. Bruce wanted to say something to reassure his sons that things would be okay. None sounded right. He let them choke him. If they could just find Danyal. As much as it would pain Bruce, his youngest doesn’t have to stay with them-with him. Bruce could never trap him here. He… He just wants Danyal to recover. Recover and be safe, whatever that looks like. The boy looked so small next to Damian. They’re twins and Danyal was so small on that bed next to his brother, all skin and bones, his skin stretched over his face making him look years older and the blood, oh God, it took a second but once they realized all that green was coming from inside of him, Bruce was sure they were going to be planning another funeral. The Y-shaped wound was gruesome and he had stared in shock. Another one of his children getting cut open, violated. Vivisected. He was going to mourn another child. He was going to puke. He was going to destroy those who dared to touch Danyal. A heady mix of vengeance and justice for a boy he’d never properly meet. Somehow though, the boy had stabilized. His boy, another one. He’s too old for surprise kids. Only to be spirited away by Damian behind layers and layers of traps that had made the family hesitate and then they were gone, on the run with Alfred’s careful stitches being the only thing holding Danyal together.   

What were they thinking? Why wasn’t I? Why didn’t I fight Damian harder when he locked them out of the recovery room? No…Danyal was already compromised. Damian saw this and ran from his family because he didn’t trust them to protect Danyal, didn’t trust them not to set him off. Maybe they would’ve made it worse, maybe his son was right even if Bruce didn’t want to admit it. Damian was saving them from an error. The boy who he had only met unconscious or through a screen, would’ve lashed out at himself again and they would’ve caused his-

“B? The Batmobile’s tracker has stopped moving on the edge of Burnside near the Craig Bridge. I can’t get a clear view.” Oracle reports 

“Hn.” He adjusts his trajectory and his sons follow suit, adjusting their positions to be out behind him in a V-shaped formation. If someone were to see them at this hour they’d see the vigilantes and would draw parallels between them and their namesakes, in normal circumstances it might bring a ghost of a smile across his face, they were a mixed bag flock. His flock. His family. He was thankful to have them at his back tonight. They’d find the boys, they had to. They still had nothing on the threat that was nipping at Danyal’s heels. If they were caught…

“Why would the Demon Brats go there?” Jason grumbles. They’re three blocks away now so Bruce has to fight his nausea down. They might have to subdue the boys if they won’t listen to reason. The idea of injuring Danyal further or obliterating any chance to build a relationship because he sees them as a threat rather than family. He has to stay firm though. He might have not been allowed in the room but between Alfred’s worried fretting and the security feed Bruce is very aware how Danyal shouldn’t be moving let alone going on the run with Damian. If Danyal would just let him explain he had options maybe he’d come back on his own.

“Hood, Red Robin, hang back and spread out. Start searching. I’d like to have our newest addition to Agent A within the hour. Nightwing with me.”

His grapple connects to the next roof and he leans into the arc so his path can wrap around the corner. Just ahead the Batmobile is stopped. The doors were open, no signs of the boys or of a struggle. Bruce knows they won’t find anything inside the Batmobile, Damian is efficient and clean in his work, but they look anyway. Bruce shares a look with his oldest and sighs. 

“Nothing in the Batmobile, Hood, Red Robin, report.” He shoots his grapple at the closest roof to get a better view of the surrounding area, Nightwing follows closely behind him. 

“Nothing that I can see.” Hood grunts.

“Nothing here either, no alerts from the cameras.” Red Robin sounds frustrated, “You don’t think they bailed in a dead zone, do you? Robin wouldn’t have him jump from a speeding vehicle, right?” 

“Hn.” Bruce refuses to acknowledge that thought. Even if it was a likely option, if they felt it necessary to throw them off to that degree. Dick is quiet next to him. He wants to say the right thing to ease his worries. Bruce has never been good at finding the right words, to reassure without false promises but will always try, “We’ll figure out what happened, Chum.”

Dick looks at him for a long moment. Bruce lets him and tries not to shutter himself away. Dick needs Bruce more than Batman right now. “Yeah,” It comes out grim, “before or after my youngest brother reopens something?” 

Bruce squeezes his son’s shoulder before turning away and shoots his grapple at the next roof. Right before he jumps he says, “We can only hope the boys are being careful and try our best to find them.”

[undertheknightwing]

WIP GAME

Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigued them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! And then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Tagged by @not-so-mundane-after-all and if you don’t mind I'm gonna steal your idea since I don't have any active wips either, just ideas:

• First, obviously I'm always working on chapters. We're gonna ignore the fact that it took me two years to get to the chapter where the boys finally go on a date 🙃 but I'll give myself a pass since this is chapter 22 and I can't believe I got that far.

• Titanstober Week 4 idea that focuses on some of the horrible things done to Gar by the Chief, all seen by Rachel who somehow found herself able to wander in Gar's memories even though she hasn't been able to before and towards the end gets her answer when meeting someone very magical and powerful.

• Now to jump to another ship, I'm a sucker for re-writing episodes/scenes and I've been itching to re-write the kryptonite poisoning scenes in the s&l episode "Loyal Subjekts" to give my Jonny-Boy some hurt + comfort because it's just.. ughh.. that he didn't get sick too. He's got Kryptonian dna which means he should be affected by kryptonite. Simple as that. He's getting poisoned by kryptonite and Clark is gonna be a good dad who actually takes care of Jon for once dammit!

• Okay back to Titans, I thought about writing some kind of Christmas party fic that takes place like four years after season 4. It'd be wholesome but also bittersweet because everyone's grown up with their own lives. DickKory are living a life as normal as they can with Mar'i, Rachel is about to graduate college, and Gar's living in Metropolis with a roommate (who's also technically his co-worker) but is still the Red's champion so he's barely had time to see the Titans throughout the years. It'd be a shock to everyone that Gar actually has the time to attend the party. (that, or release the director's cut of "a very merry crossover christmas")

Now for ideas that probably won't be written but they've been stuck in my head for a while

• Since Gar is connected to life and death through the Red, I assume he can contact the afterlife and thought how emotionally damaging it'd be for Gar to visit his parents. Like I have this image of his parents afterlife being living peacefully in a cute little house where they can just enjoy each other's company, away from all the science stuff that took up their attention forever, and someday Gar shows up to finally talk to them again after so long. Heartbreaking family reunion stuff, ya know?

• In the same train as family stuff because I love it, it makes me very happy, I'm so soft for the idea of dad!Gar. It's been in my brain for years. He'd be so silly but so sweet,, I'm just in love with it 🥺💖 Anyway the idea would be Dick meeting Gar's son and being a mix of anxiety, pride, and "Oh my god I'm a grandpa and I'm not even 40". Mar'i would be super excited to have a nephew too.

• Krypto in s&l, that's all. He's Jon's dog because Jon deserves a dog.

• Jon in Wonderland au. I was obsessed with this idea, like it's all I could think about for a bit. (I have a couple drawings from the idea that I'd glady show you bestie if you ever wanna see 💙)

[itsamenickname]

Okay, so do you guys remember how I talked about how both @jelixpo and @deckof-dragons/@anomander-dragnipurake inspired me to write my story, To Break the Bonds Within Two Kingdoms back in the Ao3 chapter 11 notes?

Well, what if I told you that there was another Bowuigi story idea I had in mind while brainstorming TBTBWTK?

That's right, what you are about to read is another rough Bowuigi story idea I had that actually originated back in late April-early May 2022 (right around the same time TBTBWTK was first born). While I ended up choosing TBTBWTK to flesh out and actively work on, I felt bad for keeping this WIP hidden within my computer files for almost an entire year (okay, I kind of told one person about this idea back in mid-November 2022, but it wasn't to the extent of what you're about to see).

And since the Mario movie is coming out today, I thought what better way to celebrate the momentous occasion than by sharing this fun little Bowuigi story idea? :)

Also, before I forget, if anyone wants to do something with this idea, then by all means go for it. (Just let me know if you have done something with the idea so that I can see it.) :) As I just mentioned, this was something I've thought of back in early-mid 2022, but because I want to not only finish TBTBWTK, but also work on a second (and bigger) Bowuigi story after TBTBWTK is done, I figured that it would be better to at least share this rough WIP/idea than to leave it in my computer files for no one else but myself to see.

Anyway, I apologize in advance for the extremely long post (and for any grammatical errors), but I hope you guys like the idea all the same! :D

(Adding a cut here to help make this post shorter.)

***********

Okay, so imagine a time in the Mushroom Kingdom where Bowser is living a good life. He and Peach recently signed a peace treaty together (and by recently, I mean like 1 month ago), not to mention that he's been dating Luigi for about 6 months now and has never been happier (per Luigi's request, they are keeping their relationship a secret which Bowser doesn't mind at all).

But on one mysterious night in the Dark Lands, Jerry (yes, the same Jerry from TBTBWTK) informs Bowser that he has a surprise visitor waiting for him in the throne room. Well, this didn't make much sense to the Koopa King. If it was Luigi, Mario, or even Peach, Jerry would've explicitly told him, but the fact that the Hammer Bro. not only refused to elaborate about the visitor, but also seemed kind of hesitant and nervous when Bowser asked for more info about the said mysterious visitor? That just seemed really weird to Bowser.

And oh boy was he right when he stepped into the throne room and saw the one and only King Boo.

Now, even though Bowser wanted nothing more than to kick the ghost king out of his kingdom, Luigi's kindness actually rubbed off on him just enough to where he instead angrily asked King Boo why the hell he's here. When Luigi talked to E. Gadd last month, the professor said that the ghost king was still trapped in that canister from the adventure of The Last Resort, so it didn't make much sense that the ghost king who he thought was trapped is floating right in front of him.

So King Boo explains to Bowser about his new plan. He rants on and on about how he is just so sick and tired of getting defeated and captured over and over again, so King Boo devised a new plan. He figures out that the best way to defeat the Mario Bros. (especially Luigi) and take over the Mushroom Kingdom/rest of the world is by teaming up with Bowser. Sure, King Boo understands that Bowser may not have a good track record when it comes to defeating Mario, but he figured that as long as Bowser distracts Mario and Peach just long enough, King Boo could use that stall to trap Luigi in a painting.

Bowser, of course, shoots down the idea. He explains to King Boo how he just recently signed a peace treaty with Peach and he doesn't want to do anything that would break Mario, Peach, and especially Luigi's trust (although he doesn't mention Luigi to King Boo). And even if he and Peach hadn't signed a peace treaty, he has very well learned from his past mistakes and knows deep down that Mario and Luigi can, and will, easily defeat both of them.

But before Bowser can leave the throne room, King Boo manages to stop him in his tracks by explaining how he knows that he and Luigi are dating.

King Boo also blackmails Bowser by saying that if Bowser doesn't agree to team up with him, he won't hesitate to posses Bowser and force him to kill Luigi with his own hands.

As much as Bowser wanted to call on King Boo's bluff, he's inwardly really scared to. If King Boo was making threats to him, Mario, Peach, or anyone else (should point out that the Koopalings & Jr. don't exist in this timeline, but I'll leave that up to reader's discretion), Bowser wouldn't care about the idea of King Boo possessing him. But King Boo was making an indirect threat to Luigi, the one person Bowser would not hesitate to lay his life down for. If anything were to happen to the love of his life, it would kill the Koopa King (no matter if it was his fault or not).

So Bowser grudgingly agrees to King Boo's plan as the ghost king is excited to finally set his plan into motion. But before he forgets, King Boo mentions one little important thing:

This new alliance they have has to be a secret. No one, not even Kamek and Kammy, can know about it. Everyone has to believe that whatever is about to happen is Bowser's ideas and his ideas alone.

And if anyone finds out about their alliance/plan on their own (or if Bowser tells anyone about their plan), King Boo will kill Luigi himself and force Mario and Bowser to watch.

_________________

So time skip to around 2 weeks later where Bowser has caused so many problems to the MK to the point to where Peach is sick of it. She sets up a royal meeting with herself, Mario, Luigi, Toadsworth, and the royal court about what they should do with Bowser. The royal court is honestly spilt on either declaring war on the Dark Lands (they have a justifiable reason to declare war because Bowser has broke parts of the peace treaty) or try to reach out to Bowser and meet with him peacefully.

Eventually, the arguments get so stressful and out of hand that Peach gets mad (and I mean really fucking mad) and orders the royal court to let her, Mario and Luigi discuss this in private. While the royal court (especially Toadsworth) are hesitant on this, they eventually follow her orders and leave the brothers and Peach alone in the room. When it's finally just the three of them, Peach just takes this time to calm down and take a few deep breaths (which Mario and Luigi don't mind and allow her to take as much time as she needs).

Once she is really to talk about it again, she explains to Mario and Luigi how she is kind of dead set on declaring war on the Dark Lands. As a few Toads pointed out earlier in the meeting, Bowser broke parts of the peace treaty, not to mentioned that she had actually privately reached out to him on multiple occasions, but has never received as response back.

Now Luigi (who had been mostly quiet throughout the entire meeting due to his anxiety and his tough decision on whether to stand by Peach or Bowser's side) tries to defend Bowser by explaining how both the MK and the Dark Lands had worked on the peace treaty for almost 3 months (not to mention that they've officially signed it last month) and theorizes that there has to be a reason that Bowser is causing so much trouble that they don't know about. Luigi begs Peach to give him time to talk to Bowser before she decides to declare war on Bowser's kingdom.

Now here, I should point out that both Peach and Mario know that Luigi and Bowser are friends, but they don't know that they're dating. So obviously, when Luigi begs Peach to let him talk to Bowser, Mario (being the protective older big brother that he is) hates the idea. He still doesn't trust Bowser and is afraid that allowing Luigi to talk to Bowser (especially right now) will ultimately get his little brother hurt or worse, killed (it would destroy Mario if anything happened to Luigi).

But despite Mario's protests, Peach makes a deal with Luigi: He has one week to talk to Bowser and make him change his ways. If Luigi succeeds, then she won't declare war on the Dark Lands. However, if he fails, Peach will declare the treaty null and void and declare war on Bowser's kingdom.

So over the course of the next 5 days, Luigi tries to reach out to Bowser in multiple ways. He tries to write him letters, meet at their usual spot on the usual days they hang out together, little things like that. However, none of his ideas work. Now, that's not to say that Bowser hadn't received Luigi's letters. In fact, Bowser has actually received every single one of his boyfriend's letters (at one instance, Bowser started to tear up as he carefully touched Luigi's handwriting, which led to King Boo taunting him on whether he should respond to Luigi's letter or not.), but...Bowser is honestly scared. He wants to tell Luigi that he hates doing what he's doing, he wants to tell Luigi about King Boo's ultimate plan to take over the MK and the rest of the world, but...he can't. He doesn't want to put Luigi in any form of danger, so he figured that the best way to keep Luigi safe is by completely shutting him out.

But that kind of backfires on Bowser because on the afternoon of the 6th day, Luigi gets a new idea.

He gets the idea to sneak over to Bowser's Castle (without Mario, Peach, or anyone else knowing) and talk to Bowser face-to-face (for the first time since Bowser's alliance with King Boo) in hopes of forcing his boyfriend to talk about why he's doing all of these bad things.

But as for what happens when Luigi finally arrives at Bowser's Castle?

Well, I'll leave that up to you. ;)

[texasdreamer01]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Self-tagging from @ygodmyy20! 👋

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

80!

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

239,131.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently Stargate Atlantis, but I'm considering the Hobbit fandom again due to some fandom events.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Psychopomp (Space Australians fandom, technically origfic) Twixt Primroses and Hawthorns (Hobbit fandom) All we are, and all we have… (Star Wars TCW / Prequel fandom) Ādfȳr (Hobbit fandom) Nice Manners for a Thief (Hobbit fandom)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I do my best, even if it's just to say thank you. I've gotten some puzzling comments before, so I haven't gotten to them yet.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Uhhhhhhhhhh I guess it depends on the fandom? I write angst a lot, anyway, so it's difficult to tell which is the most angstiest story. Maybe The Serenity Protocol, for the Star Wars fandom?

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

In terms of most satisfying resolution, maybe Svabhāva from YGO DM.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I had this one guy who left comments on every single fic on FFN below a thousand words saying "This is not a drabble.", which I suppose counts?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yep! According to my commenters, "hot".

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yyyyy-no? I have one drafted but it's not even remotely finished.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Once! And it was even from someone commenting on my fic! They did a terrible job filing off the serial numbers for it, too.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I've translated my own fics as practice, but never by anyone else.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Accidentally, yes.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I have a multitude of ships because of different dynamics and fandoms, so honestly I couldn't pick between them?

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Kintsugi, in the Sherlock fandom. I had to take a break from it and don't know if I'll ever be able to re-dedicate the time it needs.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Verbiage. I used to write a lot of poetry before doing long-form, so the word choices carried over.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing while tired or otherwise preoccupied, mostly because I write to think out an idea rather than to attract attention, so I'm not terribly concerned with quality until I re-read it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Pretty fun for some fandoms! It gets frustrating with some conlangs that are obviously under-developed, or if it's a fandom that's typically English-only and you have characters that know other languages but for some reason never use them.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Danny Phantom.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Ehhh. I can definitely say I've improved with my writing, but I've never gotten into the habit of genuinely liking my work because I know it could be better.

No pressure tags: @spurious, @pandora15, and anyone else that wants to do it!

[pb-dot]

hey! this is chance & here’s week 3’s prompt. share an excerpt that you’re very proud of from any of your wips.

Thank you for the prompt chance! As always there's a voice in the back of my head that wants to share nothing because nothing I create is good, but that's a jerk I've been suppressing for years now, so let's go, yeah? This bit is too long for the "x lines" tags that I normally post and it's hard to divide up honestly. For context, Jake is working on repairing 13's shoulder, and 13 has something important to tell him.

“Hey Jake?” 13 asked, “yeah 13? Feeling something resist?” Jake had become hyper-vigilant to his gears’ flaws, and whether they added up to resistance or other problems. “No, no, you’re doing great, as always,” there was a smile in 13’s voice, but Jake didn’t dare to look away from the precision work he was doing on 13’s elbow. “I, uh, I’ve been thinking about something,” “Yeah? What is it?” Jake could hear this was no idle comment. 13 had something on his mind, and whatever it was, it was important. Jake finished up on his current gear and looked away from the all-consuming work, towards 13’s apprehensive face. “I wanted to ask you if you can do something for me,” Jake nodded, he didn’t want to interject and add additional difficulty to what was clearly a challenging ask. “Can you… uh, no...” 13 stopped himself and allowed a moment to pass as he gathered his will before he spoke again. “I don’t want to be called 13 anymore,” he said, once those words were out the rest came like pearls on a string. “It’s not the name I was born with, it’s not a name I care for, and it’s not a name that was given to me by anyone who actually cares about me.” Jake nodded, it made sense to him to rid oneself of any ties with a man so casually cruel and demanding as Creator, who, Jake reminded himself, he should find some sort of disparaging nickname for time permitting. “Of course. What, uhm, what would you prefer I call you?” Jake asked. “I’ve been thinking Adrian if that doesn’t sound too stupid to you…” Adrian said, a shadow of a blush on his cheeks. “Adrian, yeah, I like it. Good sound to it,” Jake said. “It suits you.” Adrian looked away, to not give away that he was crying if Jake had to guess. “Thanks…” Adrian said. A slight silence fell over them before he spoke again. “Ok, this is stupid,” Adrian said with sudden urgency. “But I got to let you know now or I’ll never be able to stop thinking about it, or worrying if you’ll ever ask me if I’m named after someone or… anyway. I got it from the Olimar Trent books. Adrian Disimila is this little wimpy filing clerk at the judiciary who keeps helping Trent out although he’s both too weak and too cowardly to do much but be in the way, he keeps trying and he never takes the easy way out even when Trent offers it to him and I think he’s just…” Adrian took a deep breath. To the best of Jake’s knowledge, Adrian didn’t actually need to breathe the way normal people needed to, but there was more to breathing than staying alive. “Sorry,” Adrian said. “I just think this character is interesting and admirable, and thinking about how being out of your depth is no reason to give up has really helped me through all of this. That probably sounds really stupid, but at least now you know.” Jake didn’t want to smile, not because Adrian’s bashfulness around the origins of his name wasn’t adorable, but because he’d loath to give the impression that he was mocking him. “I don’t think it’s stupid,” he said. “I think it’s cute how bashful you are about the whole thing right now, but I don’t think it’s stupid.” “Shuddup,” Adrian punched Jake lightly in the shoulder with his functioning arm. “No, no, I’m serious,” Jake said. “It’s sweet that you’ve found strength when you needed it in those books. I’m not much of a reader myself, but maybe I should have a peek one of these days” “Yeah sure. if you manage to pull your nose out of my parts for five minutes maybe,” Adrian said. “Cheeky little clockman,” Jake responded in mock outrage. “Watch out or I’ll reverse your knees, see you bounce around then.” They shared a laugh. It was a stupid little joke, but it felt good to share things that just weren’t all that important once in a while.

Tag List @ettawritesnstudies @mrbexwrites @teacupsandstarlight @anonymousfoz @wrenofthewords @sm-writes-chaos @dyrewrites

If you want to be put on the Tag List for this project, please interact with my Tag List Post

[dangerous-disposition]

WIP Wednesday

I was tagged by @thefreakandthehair for this specific sort of WIP game, and I was also tagged by @steddieas-shegoes for a general WIP Wednesday challenge!!

RULES

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can’t share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

MY WIPS

here i have found some peace of mind (won't be posting snippets of this, so please specify if you want a smutty or clean snippet from one of my other WIPs if you request it~*~)

nile (part of the strap collection series)

i'll burn that bridge when i get to it (related to i could be honest, i could be human)

romcom AU

Steve Bingo fics (i'll write the one i feel most inspired to if u request this one ;p)

MY SNIPPET

Okay based on these rules, I have to post a snippet of something I've written in the last 7 days which means that it has to be a snippet from here i have found some peace of mind. This is the last snippet I am posting for this fic ;p

They were on The Late Show with Murray Bauman, a dreaded talkshow for most celebrities because Murray was an asshole. He was a former investigative journalist who decided to put down the pen and take up torturing celebrities with his smug grin and sweaty, balding head.

And boy, was his grin smug tonight.

“Hello, boys,” Murray practically sang as they got settled on the couch, Eddie closest to him with Grant on his right, then Gareth and Jeff. “Long time, no see!”

“Not nearly long enough, Murray,” Eddie said with a dimpled grin.

“Take it up with your agent, Edward,” Murray deadpanned before they dug into the interview.

They talked about the new album, the tour, the openers they had on board, how much the bus sucked and what they were looking forward to most when the tour ended.

At some point, Eddie felt his phone vibrate, but he ignored it, then it vibrated again immediately. Steve sent two messages, one right after the other, and Eddie had to sit there making banter with Murray Bauman. Pretty soon, only thoughts of those text messages were passing through his mind, wondering what they were, and it wasn’t long before Eddie forgot he was literally sitting on a couch on a talkshow and checked his text messages.

In his defense, it was almost nine at night and his Adderall had worn off two hours ago.

NO PRESSURE TAGS

@scarcrossdlvrs (i know ur already doing this, just wanted to tag u), @patchworkgargoyle, @stobinesque, @afewproblems, @matchingbatbites, @legitcookie, @sidekick-hero, @inairbinad, @spicysix, @willowworkswithwords

[apocrypha73]

20 questions writer meme

Thank you @heyholmesletsgo for tagging me :)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

76 (and counting)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

1,095,178 at this moment

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I'm currently writing for Visual Prison and The Untamed/MDZS fandoms, but in the past I've written for Star Wars Rebels, the mcu, Supernatural, and a few others

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Maybe not so accidentally (899 kudos). A kalluzeb (star wars rebels) canon divergence AU

A Blind Goddess (657 kudos). Another kalluzeb fic. The star wars rebels fandom is a big one, so I guess it's not a surprise my top 3 fics with most kudos belong to it. It doesn't necessarily mean they're my best fics, only that more people have read them. But I'm grateful anyway.

The Reasons Why (426 kudos). Also a kalluzeb fic, and the first one I ever posted in English (I had only written in my own language until then). It was nerve-wracking to take that step but everyone's response was so kind it encouraged me to continue.

We Weren't Always Like This (413 kudos). This is a matchablossom fic (SK8 the Infinity), the first of the two fics I've written for that pairing.

No es la sangre (401 kudos). A thorki AU. This one is in Spanish

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Of course! The comments are a place to fangirl with people who are just as enthusiastic about the OTP as you are, what's not to like? Maybe I don't always reply as fast as I should, but I enjoy doing it.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I think most of my fics have a happy ending, I'm a basic bitch and proud of it. The only exception I can recall is It's not over, a destiel fic that was inspired by episode 5x04 of Supernatural and there's no way a story set in that alternate timeline could end well tbh.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

The other 75? XDD. Okay, fine, there are two fics in which the happy ending felt very satisfactory to me because the characters went through quite a lot of angst to get there: Under the Spotlight (songxiao, The Untamed/MDZS) and Take my hand, take my whole life too (sagamist, Visual Prison)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, I've been really lucky in that regard

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do, but I'm pretty vanilla about it. I think the kinkiest thing I've ever written was some light bondage and very soft dom/sub dynamics.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

El vínculo más profundo. It's more of a fusion than a crossover actually. The characters are from the movie "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" but the story is set in the Pacific Rim universe. It was fun to write

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes, it happened a couple of times with No es la sangre. Someone took it and posted it as their own, first on ffnet and then on wattpad. I don't think it was the same person in both cases. One of the (many) advantages of writing for small fandoms, as I do now, is that the chances of that kind of thing happening are almost zero.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Partially. Someone started translating No es la sangre into English, but they got busy and stopped after a while. I've thought about translating it myself but to be honest, I don't have the energy.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, a very long time ago, with a very dear friend of mine. It was for the X-Files fandom.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

This is the most difficult question of this whole meme. I can't choose one, I love my ships dearly. I'd have to name at least five.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I only have two wips currently in the works and I intend to finish both of them.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Action scenes, I think. Sometimes dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Pacing, infodumping, knowing how to let a story breathe and not rushing it. Those are the things I find more difficult to get right.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

If the story needs it, and if it's a language I know well, why not?

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The X-Files. Yeah, it's been a while

20. Favorite fic you've written?

I changed my mind, this one is actually the most difficult question. Aaah, I don't know, I tend to associate my fics with the community I get to enjoy through them, you know? It's not about how proud I am of the fic itself, it's about the whole experience. I am very fond of En la prórroga because I wrote it as a birthday gift for a friend and she loved it. I'll always love Under the Spotlight because it was my doorway to the songxiao fandom, where I have met some of the most amazing people you can find on the Internet. The same for Can't go back anymore, my first visupri fic, because I got to become part of an incredible group of friends thanks to it. And then there's Baby, It's Cold Outside and all the fun we had while I was posting that one. I'm overwhelmed by the response I've received to Maybe not so accidentally and No es la sangre, because I never expected any fic of mine to become so loved by anyone. So how am I going to choose just one?

Tagging @dreamyguns @ardilla-cocainomana @malalechan and whoever else wants to answer

[griefabyss69]

WIP Weekend

Tagged by @hbyrde36!!! Thank you so much, this will actually be really helpful, because I do want to do some writing this weekend but I won't have time to do a lot of it, so doing it in 3 sentence pieces would be great!!

The Rules

In a reblog of this post (so people can find you in the notes) or new thread (w/ rules attached) if you want to play on your own, post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We’re posting progress here. If you haven’t made any, go make some and come back to play!

After you’ve posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event or gift fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That’s it! You can invite others to join in, or just post.

The Files

curious

rosebush

stimulation

heavy duty repair

familiarity

The Snippet

(Under the readmore, Steddie, rated: T) No pressure tags <3 @steddieas-shegoes @wynnyfryd @penny00dreadful @simplebtromance @vecnuthy @zombiethingy

(From "curious". It's a fairly common thing to write in fanfiction but I was just writing to write and this came out! Also nothing wrong with 94839543 cakes you know?)

"I'll be honest," Steve says, a blush unlike anything Eddie's ever seen on him blossoming over his cheeks. "I'm curious about you."

Eddie feels his eyebrows raise, his body halting right in the middle of the step he was trying to take, his hackles raising as his mind speeds through all of the possibilities of that that could mean.

"You're… curious," he says, frowning. "About me."

Steve's eyes see all the way down to his bones as he carefully sits down on the couch, awkwardly pulling the strings in his limbs to settle down in a way the he hopes looks natural at all.

"Yeah," he whispers, clearing his throat. "You never talk about like, dating. Or sex. And you don't have to, but you're so loud about everything else."

Right.

Steve's curious about Eddie's sex life because he's used to hanging around the type of people who won't shut up about that kind of thing.

"Well, what have you heard?" He asks, interested in what kind of information Steve's been chewing on this whole time. "Any rumors? Saucy little secrets through the grapevine? Slurs on the bathroom stall?"

Steve winces at that last one, and Eddie knows they'd both probably thinking of the same incident. There was a whole… kerfuffle over that one, though whoever wrote it never got caught.

"I've heard a lot of things," Steve says, sighing. "But I'm asking you because I want to know like, the truth. Or lie to me, I don't care. I just want to hear it from you."

He's got such a sweet little smile on now, actually seems like he's open to taking whatever Eddie says as fact no matter how farfetched it sounds, and he really really really wants to impress him, to make him think he's super good at all of this, or even give him a half truth that hides all of the incriminating details about himself.

But what he needs is to drop the heavy armor. He sighs, tired from bearing the weight of being himself.

"Alright," he says, picking at the edge of his sleeve, dizzy with how hard his heart is pounding. "I'm bisexual, not a virgin, I have like five pairs of handcuffs, though I had to stop using them for sex after the whole getting chased by the cops thing, and I'm in such a long dry spell that I think my dick might fall off if I don't use it soon."

Steve's pretty mouth drops open just enough to make Eddie imagine sticking his fingers in there, and then he's smiling around a breathy laugh.

"Wow, okay," he says, running a hand through his hair as he rearranges his legs in the armchair. "I'm bisexual and not a virgin too. And in a dry spell. But not the handcuff thing, I've never had a pair."

Eddie almost offers him a pair on reflex, it's not like he's using them properly anyway, but he catches on as he processes what he said. He sits up straight, his body moving on it's own as he points at him, an evil, radiant type of hope stinging underneath his skin.

"Since when are you bisexual?" He asks, not an accusation, but a little confused. "I feel like I would've heard that one before?"

Steve ducks his head, blessing his kneecaps with his smile before he looks back up at him. It's such a cute move that Eddie considers climbing on top of him just to watch him peer up through his eyelashes.

"Yeah, well, you didn't hear about it because I kept it a secret," he says, his blush deepening as he beams. "So… Have you uh, been with men?"

Eddie can only nod, whatever defense he used to have against the force of Steve's sincerity blasted away into smithereens, leaving him weak enough to follow him off a bridge if he asked.

"Cool, cool," Steve nods back at him, awkwardness peeking out around the edges of his movements as he taps his fingers on the arms of the chair. "I haven't had the chance, but… I guess I don't need to in order to know."

Eddie has a set of rules, set in stone - his personal doctrine. Some of them are shouted from the top of his lungs and some of them whispered, hard earned, adopted once the third time had not been the charm, and he finally learned that guys who are curious always end up being dickheads.

He breaks his rules for Steve all of the time though, and so he offers, friendship hanging precariously off of the cliff's edge, a sinking disappointment in himself for having no self preservation smothering his nerves.

"You wanna try it?" He asks, blunt, but friendly, not willing to mess up the communication about this, wants any "no" Steve gives him to be as real as any "yes".

"Yeah," Steve breathes, leaning forward in his seat. "I really do."

Eddie's not prepared for it.

He asked, ready to be let down gently or even to be laughed off, but he didn't really think Steve would go for it, and now he has to figure out how to navigate this without fucking it up.

"Y-yeah?" He asks, licking his lips, the nerves breaking free from their blanket of disappointment. "What uh, what've you been wondering about?"

Steve looks tormented for a moment as he leans back into the chair, his head pressed against it. Even the knit of his eyebrows looks good, with his chin tilted up to show off the way his throat moves when he swallows.

He's like one of those paintings, with beautiful nude men in some kind of biblical anguish, and Eddie is simply a person lucky enough to be standing in front of it at a museum.

[reiverreturns]

us 🤝 gratuitously talking about our wips instead of actually working on them

i NEED to know about this ac/pacrim nonsense 👀

it's a hard life in the trenches (doing nothing productive whatsoever)

EHEHEHE okay so my nonsense file is basically all @alethiometry's fault and is more or less a dumping ground for assassin's creed PacRim AU stuff that i write odds and sods for when i don't feel like writing anything serious. it's mostly hytham/jacob frye where hytham is an ex-ranger who designs jaeger weaponry and jacob is an active ranger alongside evie. idk i think they'd have SUCH good chemistry and i know in my heart i'm right on that one. i have zero intention of ever making a real publishable story out of the stuff in there but i have lots and lots of little bits! it's very much ignoring quality, just having fun stuff.

anyway for context i've pulled a bit where jacob gets injured before the big mission to close the breach. furious and upset that he'll be sidelined, he ends up running his mouth to the press about how the world governments and their wall building plans are all stupid as hell and hytham sneaks him out into a hong kong hotel to screw some sense into him before marshal aya can find jacob and beat his ass six ways to sunday. i'm also dropping a cut in because it's a chonky bit!

send me a title from my wip list and i'll post a snippet and some thoughts

---

“Where will you go when this is all over?” Hytham asks.

Jacob turns, attention turns sharp, but Hytham isn't looking at him. He’s leaning against the edge of the window, arm resting across the top of the frame, eyes locked on a lonely hulking mass fuzzed in the heavy, sodden mist of the bay. A Jaeger on reconnaissance and repair. Odin’s Sight, if Jacob remembers the assignments. He can’t think of anything more pointless than checking the walls now.

You pilot a Jaeger for long enough, you come to understand that Rangers come in two flavours. The first are the sort who fight for an after. Eivor and Vili, with their dream of a patch of land and animals aplenty in the far flung reaches of Norway. Connor being reunited with his family back home. The second kind of Ranger fights against. ‘After’ isn’t exactly a worry when you're trying to wrestle a Kaiju’s lower mandible from the rest of its jaw. ‘After’ doesn’t mean anything if the chances are you’ll end up going down with your Jaeger. 

Before today Jacob had always considered himself firmly in camp two. Even now, with his Jaeger miles away, he can feel the mechanical click and whirr of the gears in his wrist as he sits up on the bed, pneumatic pressure falling when he adjusts his bad leg. It’s raining and the machinery aches. Evie's running through her tests with Henry. She's worried about him. His mind is hers and hers is his; no start and no end, a complex knot of flesh and metal that cannot be divorced. Jacob's future is a blue-tinged meld of past and present. It does not - can not - exist without Evie or Rook Empire in it.

But that had been then. Hytham turns, sighing, and the realisation hits Jacob like a bullet to the chest.

Jacob might die. He might live to see the whole world fall. He might be crushed beneath a warm body like he was half an hour ago, panting into Hytham's mouth, sweat-slick and needy for more time. But he also might live. There might be an ‘after’ after all.

More silence. Jacob wishes he had Hytham’s comfort in it. Maybe the roar of blood in his ears wouldn’t feel so intrusive.

“I hadn’t thought of it,” Jacob eventually says in a voice that doesn’t sound like his own, hands absently gripping the sheets, mind scrambling and overshot to somewhere far, far away. “I could go back to London, I suppose. Would be nice to go somewhere where I could pretend the world didn’t completely go to shit. But it’s…” He looks at the condensation on the windows, mouth dry. “I don’t think there will be a place for me when I go back.” 

Stupid thing to say. London’s a big fucking city. It still is, despite the attacks and riots and civil unrest that has destabilised its boroughs over the years. Hytham tilts his head thoughtfully.

“There will be no Rangers anymore,” he says, and Jacob nods.

[red-riding-wood]

Back from Hiatus

Trigger warning? I think? Brief mentions of medical stuff, nothing graphic. Oh, and death (but none occurred).

TLDR if you don't want to read seven paragraphs: Physical health bad, mental health bad, now hospitalised, fucked up when transferring my story files, hospital bad, home soon?, regardless you will be seeing me back in your feed probably more than you'd like

Rambling below cut

So, about a month ago I had to take a step back from Tumblr... and then an even bigger step back from Tumblr, because I had taken a step back from writing and I found that I just pressured myself too much to write and post when I did use the app. (I did my best to save your guys' stories in my drafts to read later but... I may have missed some and I definitely have some catching up to do.)

Why did I take a hiatus from writing? Well, that was due to my physical health declining in a real bad way. I won't get into it too much here, because I would end up telling a dramatic yet probably honestly boring story of the last four years of my life, but I'm willing to answer any questions if anyone's curious.

Anyway, that sent my head into a state of just utter... fear, I suppose. It's very difficult to care or focus on anything else when death is literally on your mind, and I was also in this weird state of limbo because I wasn't sure if I would be going to hospital or dying or what... so I didn't write, or really do anything except try to take care of myself the best I could. And I pretty much just isolated.

I've been in hospital a couple days now. The fear of death has lessened, and I think I'm gonna be okay, though I'm straight up not having a good time. I had this idea that what would get me through it was writing, so I sent myself all of my docs for my WIPs. Thing is, I keep shortcuts to them on my desktop, and apparently they don't save changes to the root file?? A lesson I learned after I showed up and found that massive chunks of my writing, notes, and storyboards were missing. Yeah, I fucked up.

But now there is talk of outpatient care as soon as this Friday which means I can maybe go home with my TPN (feeding through a vein tube which is the best way I can describe it since I am not a medical professional; it's basically a hardcore IV and I assure you it's badass and exactly like Cyberpunk 2077 -- that was sarcasm but seriously, props to anyone who lives with these because these are terrifying). If that's the case, I'll be able to carry on with White Ribbon and the fics I had started for Darjeeling and Budapest, and it will probably be a lot easier for me to write in general. I haven't tried writing yet, but hospital is a really uncomfortable environment for me (I mean, I'm sure it is for most people but I have a lovely lifetime dose of trauma on top of the usual) and I'm not managing as well as I thought I would so I have my doubts on how well I will be able to focus. (Don't worry about requests, guys... I haven't forgotten about any of them and I still fully intend to fulfill them, even if it means writing your smutty fantasies in hospital.)

If that's not the case, and I'm stuck here until surgery, well, I am willing it into the damn universe that I'm gonna write again regardless. So if you don't see me post something in the next week you have my blessing to send copious amounts of hate mail.

Thank you for reading my long-winded explanation. Oh, and, don't hesitate to message/reach out or tag me in anything! I'm feeling more social again now that I'm not, you know, dying and stuff.

[sortofanobsession]

Will o’ the Wisp - Ch. 8 (Umbrella Academy WIP) Diego x Reader slow burn

Author’s note: A bit of a shorter chapter this time. Events of Episode 1x07 The Day That Was. No translations needed this time.

So as it goes, Y/N = your name. Y/N/N = your nickname. Reader pronouns She/Her.

Tag Requests are Open just message me.

Primary Pairing: Diego Hargreeves x Female!Reader (Slow Burn Season 1)

Series/TUA Masterlist

Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 9

Word count: 2k+

Content Warning: Drugs, Drinking, Anger, Sibling Rivalry, Blood, Passing Out, Injury, (Temporary) Fatal Injury, Head trauma, Cardiac arrest, CPR, Stitches, Police, Arrest, mentions of death, mentions of murder, cussing/swearing/cursing, Panic Attacks, Exhaustion

Chapter 8: Things that do Matter

"Harold Jenkins?" Allison asks, holding the note from the Commission.

"Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?" Diego asks. 

"I don't know," Five says as he tosses the empty coffee cup across the room. "Yet. But I do know that he's responsible for the apocalypse. So we have to find him. And we have to do it now."

"How is he connected to what's gonna happen?" Luther asks.

"I don't know," Five answers.

"Wait, so you just know his name? That's it?"

“That's enough," Five informs.

"There's probably dozens of Jenkinses," 

"Well," Five admits. "We just better start looking, then."

"Am I the only one that's skeptical here? I mean, how exactly do you know all of this about what's his name?"

 "Harold Jenkins."

"You know those lunatics in masks who attacked the house?"

"Oh, yeah, I think I remember those guys."

"Yeah, the ones that attacked us while you were getting drunk."

"Yeah," Five says. "Them. They were sent by the Temps Commission to stop me from coming back and preventing the end of life on Earth."

"The Temps what?"

"My former employer. They monitor all of time and space to make sure that whatever is supposed to happen happens. They believe the apocalypse is coming in three days. So I went to Commission headquarters and intercepted a message that was meant for said lunatics. 'Protect Harold Jenkins'. So he must be responsible for the apocalypse."

"What do you mean, protect time and space?" Allison asks at the same time Diego says he’s going after Hazel and Cha-Cha.

"Do you have any idea,” Allison starts. “How insane this sounds?"

"You know what else is insane?” Five counters. “I look like a 13-year-old boy. Y/N glows like she is made of neon. Klaus talks to the dead, and Luther thinks he's fooling everybody with that overcoat. Everything about us is insane. It always has been."

"He's got a point there," Klaus acknowledges. 

"We didn't choose this life. We're just living it."

"For the next three days, anyway."

"But the last time we tried to stop it, we all died."

"Why is this time any different?"

 "Why shouldn't I go home to my daughter?" "Because this time, I'm here. We have the name of the man responsible."

"Guys, we actually have the chance of saving the lives of billions of people,” Five insists. “Including Claire."

Allison is surprised. "You know her name?"

 "I do, and I'd like to live long enough to meet her,” Five tells her. 

All right."

"Let's get this bastard," Allison states.

"You had me at Gerald Jenkins," Diego says. 

"Harold Jenkins," Five corrects him. 

"Whatever."

Y/N chuckles but nods.

Diego continues. "I've already lost two people this week, I'm not losing anyone else." She reaches over and gently puts her hand on the one in the sling.

"And Luther?"

"Yeah, you go. I'm gonna stay and go through Dad's files. I still think this has something to do with why he sent me to the Moon."

"Seriously?" Diego asks. "Now you wanna make the end of the world about you and Dad?"

"No. 'Watch for threats.' That's what he told me.” 

Diego can feel his sister’s sigh. 

“You think that's a coincidence? This all has to be connected somehow."

"No, we should all stick together."

"We don't have time for this," Five says.

"Let's roll."

"I know where we can find this asshole."

“Diego…” she starts. 

"Klaus, you're with me."

"Yeah. I'm good,” Klaus tells them. “I think I'll, uh I think I'll pass. I'm feeling a little under."

Diego looks at Y/N when he moves, but she doesn't. "Would you be mad if I stayed here?" She asks him.

"You want to stay?" He repeats. She always wanted to go with him, one way or another. Even when he didn’t want her to. It set off alarms in his head, especially after the way she was acting when Viktor was there. "What's wrong?" 

Five seems to get impatient, but Diego glares and waves him off. "I'll be right there," he tells their younger-looking, much older brother. Five relents, for now.

She looks at Diego. “You go. I’ll stay here and see if I can help Luther. I need some sleep. I can get that here. You have to admit I'm off my game. I'm too tired. I didn't even see V get here, and the Wisp was in full form in the room. I barely reacted when Five-"

"Luz, look at me," he tells her. His hand was on her cheek to make her really look at him. He studies her face. His thumb brushes along the dark circles under her eyes. She must be bone tired to actually admit it. "Okay, you get some sleep and see what you can do after. Keep those two in line if you have to." 

"DIEGO!" Five calls him.

"ALRIGHT!" Diego turns and shouts back.

"Be careful," she says.

"Of course, can't do anything stupid without you, I promised. Right?"

She nods. "Now go before Five has a rage stroke fitting of the old man he is."

"I'm starting to regret asking the two of you to get along," Five glares at Diego as he approaches the car. 

"Well, I regret you a lot, so there's that," Diego counters. 

"Y/N is staying?" Allison asks.

"Yeah, she is going to get some sleep and then do whatever she can to help."

"And you're okay with that?" Both Five and Allison are surprised.

"Would I rather we all be going, of course, but her powers can be a drain. If she needs the rest up, so we have a better chance of stopping this guy, then better now than later. Besides, Luther and Klaus are here, Pogo too. They'll look after her."

She manages to get a bit of sleep. When shouting wakes her. She finds Klaus in his room.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“Luther left,” he tells her.

“What? Why?” 

“He found the research he did while on the moon, and dad didn’t even look at it,” Klaus says.

“But that…what?” she says in shock. “I’m going to talk to Pogo.”

She looks at her father’s office and sees the mess Luther left. “Pogo?” She goes to find him.

“Yes, Miss Y/N,” he answers. 

“What happened?” she asks. Pogo explains most of what happened between Reginald and Luther. Or as much as he is willing to say. She helps him straighten a few things up before Klaus seems to have a change of heart and tells her that Luther wanted to be more carefree like him and that they should probably find him.

“Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?!” She runs to her room and grabs her jacket. “We need to find him!” She sends out a handful of Wisps but keeps her body moving and searching as she does. “I’ll look. You just make sure I don’t get hit by a car or anything. You can manage that at least, right?”

“I’m sorry, Sunshine,” Klaus says.

“Can you do that?” she repeats.

“Of course, I’m not going to let you get hit by a car or get shot…again. Diego would murder me.”

“Okay, thank you,” she says before putting more focus into her search. 

“We should have taken him to the hospital.” Allison and Diego manage to get a bloody Five back to the Academy. 

“A kid with a shrapnel wound might raise some questions,” Five tells them.

“Yeah, well, so does the murder shrine in Harold Jenkins' attic.” 

“He's still losing blood.” 

“What do we do?” 

“We gotta get the shrapnel out.” 

Diego sees Grace. 

“Diego, where are you going?” Allison asks. 

“Mom?” Diego asks. 

“Oh, hello, Diego, dear.”

 “What... How are you still... walking around?”

“One foot in front of the other,” Grace tells him. “Why? How do you do it?”

He gets Grace to save Five. 

Klaus keeps looking at his sister nervously as he argues with Ben. She barely even registers him talking. Her concern for Luther is pushing her more than her father ever did as a kid. She ignores the throbbing behind her temples as she searches. The throbbing pain turns into a full-blown nauseating migraine as she follows a lead to a rave. After hearing someone mention the hairiest man they have ever seen. That had to be him. She pulls back all but two orbs to search. “He’s here somewhere. Find him.” She and Klaus split up.

“Anything?” Diego asks as they stand in the hall outside of Five’s room. 

“There's no answer at Viktor's place,” Allison tells him. “And the receptionist at the music school said he was a no-show for his lessons today.”

“Hey, you okay?” 

“Yeah.”

“I don't know. It's just surreal seeing him. I just wanna tell him that I'm s -”

“We don't have enough time.” Diego says. “We gotta go.”

“I don't know, Diego.”

“Five is laying there, unconscious.”

“We need him.”

“We can do this ourselves”

“We did that already, remember? We all ended up dead.”

Allison is unsure.

“I'm just I'm thinking I should go and see Claire before,” she tells him. 

“You can't run away from this, Allison,” he states. “That's what started this whole mess in the first place.” He glances at the empty rooms around them and thinks about what is happening. What has happened. Everything that still needs to be done.

“Luther was right,” he admits, much to Allison’s surprise. 

“I didn't think I would ever hear you say those words,” she says. 

“Yeah, well, we gotta stick together,” Diego insists. 

“Where do we start?”

“There's no other addresses in the file, but there is another relation listed.”

“Jenkins' grandmother,” he tells her. “She lived near Jackpine Road.”

“You think he took her there?” 

“It's a good enough place to start.”

“Nope,” Diego says and starts moving in the other direction down the road. “Come on, this way.”

“Wait,” Allison says, confused, “but the car is back that way.”

“Trust me, okay?” Diego implores. “Come on.”

“But what is going on?”

“They're here for me,” he tells her. “They think I did something.” 

Allison has to ask. “What do they think you did?”

Police sirens signal that their time to chat is running out.

“Murder,” Diego answers.

Allison can’t help but ask, “Did you?” 

“No, no, no, of course not, okay?” Diego insists. “Y/N was there too. Why would you ask that about me, anyway?”

“She isn’t here. And I mean, you do carry knives with you everywhere.”

“Yeah, okay, we're gonna have to split, okay?” Diego says. “I'm in charge.” He looks over at her. “Remember? Viktor needs you.”

“Don't do anything stupid, okay?” Allison says. Diego because she isn’t the sister that is usually telling him that. And he’d promised that sister that he wouldn’t do anything stupid. Now here he was about to get arrested. She was not going to be happy about that.

“Drop it!” The officer tells Diego.

“Weapon on the ground, Diego.”

Diego winces in pain as his injured arm is pulled roughly.

“I expected better from you, Chuck,” Diego says.

“I got orders,” Beaman says, “You and your glowing sister. Don't make this harder than it already is.”

“Glad she’s not here then,” Diego admits.

“Diego Hargreeves, you're under arrest on the suspicion of the murder of Detective Eudora Patch.”

“Rodriguez, I thought we were friends.”

“You killed a cop, asshole.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” The cop continues. “Anything you say - can and will be used against you.”

Diego spits at him. “Use that against me.”

She can’t believe what she is seeing when she does find him. "Luther?!" She stares in shock at her hulking brother's clearly inebriated form. Shirtless and dancing like a maniac. 

"Y/N/N!" Luther gestures for her to come closer and hugs her a bit too tight. He doesn't notice the way she winces at the pinch of pain in her arm. She had a feeling he'd torn a couple of her stitches, causing her to drop the Wisps forms. Her powers return to her and make her glow. He sets her back on her feet. Her hand goes up to her injured arm. "Guys! This is my sister, Y/N. You should see what you can do!" 

"Her aura is so bright," someone says. She flinches back when she feels someone touch her face. 

"That's nothing. You should see the Wisp!"

"Hey! Watch it. That's not my aura. It's my powers," she says, pulling back and swatting away the hands that reach for her with her good arm. She turns back to Luther. "Luther, we need to find Klaus and go home."

Her brother looks around almost comically but comes up with nothing. "But this is fun!" 

She sighs. She knows she can’t physically move him. What choice does she really have. "Right, just stay here. I’m going to find Klaus my way. Don't you dare wander off on me," she points at Luther. "Okay, big brother? I need you to have my back."

"Yeah, of course," Luther nods. "Guys watch this," he says when she closes her eyes and summons multiple small orbs again. She ignores the oohs and ahhs around her and sends them out to search. "Crazy, right? So cool." She hears Luther say. "Hey, don't touch." Luther scolds someone when she feels a hand in her hair, but it's gone before she can bring more attention back. 

"Klaus!" She shouts and turns to Luther. "Don't leave." 

"I won't!" Luther says but she decides to leave a small whip orb with him. She goes to where she had seen their brother.

"Klaus!" she shouts, but his form is almost too still, and others seem to be gathering around him. She can feel dread creep up her spine. "Klaus, please!” She slaps his cheek. Ignoring the chatter and stares around them as her body glows intensely blue from her anxieties shining through the Wisp inside her. He wasn’t breathing. She must have said it out loud because someone comes closer and starts giving him CPR. Her normally well-maintained focus to keep the Wisp down is gone as she watches the stranger try to revive her brother. The orb she left with Luther fades as she pleads with Klaus. "Come on! You don't get to leave me too!" She can feel tears on her face as she begs. "This isn't how Five saw it, and you don't get to go without me. I can't lose both you and Ben. I can't." She lets out a laughing sob as Klaus seems to come around.

"Sunshine?" Klaus blinks at her.

"DON'T SCARE ME LIKE THAT!" She shouts as she scrambles to her feet, pulling him up and into a hug. He feels her shake. 

Klaus feels a hint of guilt as Ben berates him for upsetting the one sibling that routinely cared for them. "Hey, Sunshine, I'm okay," Klaus assures her, wiping some of the tears off her face. "I'm sorry, I was…trying to help Luther."

"Luther!" She gasps, her hand going to Klaus' and dragging him back to where she had left Luther, but he was gone. She curses in every language she knows. Earning odd looks from the people around them. “ I told him to stay here. I left a Wisp with him, but I lost it when you weren't waking up." 

"Sorry," Klaus says as they look around. She finds out that Luther had been kicked out. "Are you bleeding?" He looks at her arm. "We need to get that taken care of." 

"We need to find Luther!"

"We can do both," he says.

They track Luther back to the Academy, and Klaus can tell his sister is practically dead on her feet. The search and panic attack she had when she found him seemed to drain any energy reserves she had been surviving on. She could hardly protest when Grace redoes her sutures and tucks her in. She’s out before Grace even leaves the room. The Wisp a dim glow in the dark room as he closes the door. 

[sabrinatvband]

Fat Evil Women devlog 1

I'm working on a new comic and I thought it would be good to share some notes on its production. I think this will be the only devlog I share publically for this comic; I'll probably include a start-to-finish log with all of the concept art and layout roughs as a tier bonus when I sell this on itch.io later. But, here's a very generous taste.

This comic is eventually going to be sold as a CBR file on itch, but I'm also doing to try printing it on A3 paper [which will be folded] and making a small batch of physical copies to give away. It will probably be 32 pages long. It's going to be an anthology [with one particularly long story]. In other words, it's going to be a complete comic, like one you might buy in a comic shop, rather than something more "informal" in shape. In the future, I plan on making enough of these to collect them in trade paperback form, perhaps as a print on demand book?

So far I've done a couple of layouts and compiled a ton of notes. Work on this project began with a simple two-page layout for a bimbo sequence.

I did all the pencilling, inking, and coloring in between two and four hours I think. The first panel on the second page uses an old drawing of the bimbo character I'd drawn several months ago.

I then made a sequence using a Goblin Queen character I'd created around a year ago. Here's the sequence and the original illustration I'd done. The second incomplete panel is from an old drawing I started but never finished.

Yes, the Goblin Queen who looks nothing like a goblin is meant to be a reference of sorts to the Goblin King from Labyrinth, if you were wondering. Except my Goblin Queen mostly hangs out with dark elves.

These sequences are only meant to be rough guides for the final drawings, but I put way more efforts into my layouts than I actually need to. After making these two page sequences, I decided to do something a little more ambitious.

I illustrated a woman wearing a shiny black dress, and she reminded me of an old indie porno producer character I'd created a while ago named Demonia [please ignore how terrible the old three part sequence looks; I didn't know how to draw fat women yet].

When I started plotting this sequence out in my notebook, it was only four pages long. But I added a bunch of extra panels in later and brought it up to six pages [The numbers are original panels, and the letters are ones I added in after making the first complete rough layout.]

I made some concept art for characters I'd mentioned in the script that didn't have designs yet, as well as a few locations. I then compiled all of that into a CBR file I can refer to while working on the final art [the blacked out bits in the thumbnails are photo references].

I then started work on another sequence that quickly grew beyond the six pages I was initially planning on doing.

A few years ago, when I first started using my Wacom, I illustrated an androgynous spider creature. Much more recently, I started moving overseas and started designing new characters in my sketchbook that I was planning on making digital pieces with later, and I revisited my spider concept. If you overlay the rough spider drawing from the sketchbook page with the digital WIP below, you'll notice I did a whole bunch of warping and stuff to the individual limbs to make it look better.

This WIP will appear in finished form in the spider comic somewhere; look out for it.

Anyways, I decided this spider would be perfect for a weight gain sequence, and so I started making concept art.

This is just a fraction of the concept art I created. I've done at least 15 pages of work for this comic, and a lot of it is exploratory work. In the beginning, I had basically no idea what the plot of the sequence would be, and designing new characters and illustrating scenarios gave shape to the story.

After making maybe three or four pages of sketches, and writing a list of elements I wanted to be in the story in my notebook, I made this rough synopsis of the plot. I then started working on a CBR file for the spider sequence that includes photo references, sketches, old designs I want to repurpose, scans of my notebook, etc.

Work was slowing down in my notebook, and so eventually I made a text document and started writing down panel-by-panel bullet points. Of course this all needs to be adapted into rough visuals, but I covered a lot of ground with this after building my foundation.

You might be wondering what the point of all this pre-production work is. The problem with comics as a medium is that it's extremely time intensive, and so you have to get all of the iterative stuff done long before you put pencil to bristol board for the first time [assuming you only use bristol board during the very last stage of your process].

[Old comic artists were sometimes drawing upwards of 40 pages a month, and they didn't have time to think things out so thoroughly. But for people who aren't drawing multiple books a month, it's been common to do multiple waves of layouts for decades, and this pre-production stuff has only gotten more common. Which is good; quality > quantity. The video on layouts below is a great overview.]

While I was doing layouts in my notebook for this spider sequence, I started working out a page that ended up not hitting all of the notes it needed to. If I'd been drawing by the seat of my pants, it would've been a big problem, but when you're doing layouts with illustrations only two or three steps above stick figure drawings, re-doing a page is not a hassle.

You might be wondering what my actual workflow is for producing finished art. Once I got very used to the feeling of using an Intuos Wacom, I told myself I was going to draw comics entirely digitally. It made a lot of sense; I could use layers, perspective work is a lot easier digitally, and I can fix mistakes and/or warp things a lot more easily.

Over time, I realized I hated doing everything digitally. There are many things that are better digital, like coloring. I prefer drawing pin-ups digitally. But I really don't like drawing an entire page digitally, and I realized my previous serious comic attempts had all petered out when it was time to start doing the final work in the computer, after the layouts and stuff had already been completed.

Of course, I'd tried making professional quality work without computers before. But it's nearly impossible to do that inside of a sketchbook [although I'd drawn many joke comics in highschool using a sketchbook], and using only bristol board I had problems with things like perspective; I have a lot of respect for older artists who couldn't use any digital tools.

So, I've resolved to buy a scanner and printer. I'm going to make final layouts in my art programs that have skeletons laid out where I want them, perspective grids, panel layouts, etc, and then I'll print them onto bristol board using light blue ink [which doesn't get picked up by a scanner]. I'll then do the final pencilling and inking on bristol board, scan those pages, and do any touch-ups and coloring in the computer.

I forgot to mention that none of these comics have words. Perhaps future issues of Fat Evil Women will have dialogue and stuff, but as a conceptual thing this first issue is basically completely silent. When I was making panel grids digitally to start working on some final layouts, I noticed that, when you don't have any speech bubbles, a traditional six panel grid looks way too square and vertical. So, I've decided to make my spider sequence on a four-tier grid, which shouldn't be a massive change. The entire story uses uniform rows, and so it just means moving stuff back. There are no dramatic page-turn moments that will be compromised by this change.

I might have to alter the Demonia sequence as well, but probably not. Since the height of the panels in the two page sequences are variable, I think I'll leave them exactly as they are.

I was planning on including a giantess sequence in this first issue as well, but if I reach 32 pages without it then I'll have to push it to a later issue. But since I'm moving to four-tier layouts, I might end up with a lot fewer pages than expected.

[xenon-demon]

WIP Wednesday

thank you so much @sailors-ink for the tag!!! <3 it's technically thursday for me now (gotta love being australian) but shhhh it's fine WIP Wednesday is a state of mind ✨

In a reblog (or new post w/ rules attached), post up to five (5) filenames of your WIPs; not titles, file names.

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be words you wrote in the last 7 days. We're posting progress here. If you haven't made any, go make some and come back to post!

After you've posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from (for example, an event fic), write 3 sentences on it anyway, and then 3 more on another to share.

That's it! You can invite others to join in, or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request!

WIPs:

1. steddie domestic hairwashing 2. cheerscoops fake dating season 3 au (steddie/buckingham) 3. when you come back, it's gravity (kas!steve au) 4. med student steve & nurse eddie who is sick of his shit 5. doctor who steddie indulgence

And the snippet I'm posting is from steddie domestic hairwashing:

“You know there isn’t actually a hospital policy about bathing?” Steve’s barely shut the door behind him before he starts speaking.   Eddie feels a thrill of anxiety shoot through his chest and hopes to whatever higher power there might be that his heart rate monitor doesn’t pick up on it. “What?” It comes out way too strained, and Eddie’s really got to get a grip on himself. Just because he feels like a deer in the headlights right now doesn’t mean he needs to act like it, for fuck’s sake. “There isn’t a hospital policy about who can help you shower, or go to the toilet, or whatever. You don’t have to put up with the shitty sponge baths from the nurses anymore,” Steve says, his voice bright and excited about this, the absolute bastard. Eddie swallows, trying desperately to school his features into something calmer. “Oh. How, um, how’d you find that out?” “I asked one of the nurses,” Steve replies, like it’s obvious, and of course he fucking did. God damn Steve Harrington and his stupid god damned helpful nature. "Sure, you can't have an actual shower, since you still have bandages and stuff on. But as long as we don't get them wet, there's nothing stopping me from washing your hair or helping you get cleaned up." “Right,” Eddie says, and he knows he should say something, crack some kind of joke like I’m surprised the nurses will speak to anyone associated with me, but he can’t bring himself to. He sees it on Steve’s face the moment he notices that Eddie isn’t as excited about this as Steve is. “What’s wrong?” Steve asks, brows furrowing slightly. He’s much quieter now. “I thought your hair was bothering you? Since, y’know, we had that conversation…”

Aaaaand I'm honestly not sure who to tag since I've seen most of my writer mutuals post for WIP Wednesday already, so I'm gonna say if you see this and want to do it but haven't been tagged, then do it and say I tagged you! <3

[violets-in-her-arms-writes]

WIP Wednesday Tag

Thank you @rubywrite for the tag ! ♥ (even though it took me 3 days to answer XD) It forced me to write on my main WIP, so thank you so much !

RULES:

In a reblog (or new post/w rules attached) post up to five filenames of your WIPs, not titles, file names

Post a snippet from one of them. Snippet must be something you wrote in the last 7 days (we're posting progress here. If you haven't made any, go make some and come back to post!)

After you've posted, people can send you an ask with one of your file names. You must then write 3 sentences in that file. If the filename is one you can't share from, write 3 sentences on it anyway and then 3 more on another to share!

That's it! You can invite others to join in or just post. If you tag me in your post, I will send you an ask request.

I usually name my WIP documents with the (temporary) title, so I'm afraid it won't be very interesting but anyway, here are 5 of my recent-ish WIPs:

🦇 La Fledgling (version complète) → doc where I compile all the things I've written for this WIP, because otherwise they are separated in "chapter 1" to "chapter 11" documents, but I like to have a complete doc to know how many words I have

🧜‍♀️ Mermaid AU → not very original since this is, you guessed it, an AU where the two main characters of the Fledgling are mermaids (well, one is currently drowning but I only have 600 words, I'll get to the mermaid part one day). It's a baby WIP, something I write for fun when I don't feel like writing for the main WIP. I might try my hand at a soulmate AU next, but I need to decide what kind and that's gonna need a lot of thinking (15 minutes to three business weeks, basically).

🌠The Wishing Star → it was my Camp NaNo project, about a woman who wants to become a pilot in a war-torn galaxy but first has to serve in a postal ship. Unfortunately, the ship is attacked but the resistance, she discovers she's adopted and has to fight to liberate her birth planet. Poor girl. It's currently on hold, because I was tired of it by the end of April XD

🐍The Witch's Time (tome 3) → the love of my life and bane of my existence. I'm stuck in the middle of this book, I need to cut half of it and put it in the 4th book and figure out... so many things. I printed the first two and they are soooo pretty. Unfortunately, this third book is kicking my ass. I'll be back Llewella, I swear, but I need time. It's not you, it me (I say, like a liar). It's technically an AU of another project of mine, but it grew a mind of its own and now I'm attached.

👽 Le truc avec les aliens (tome 2) → technically, its name is "Empire Déchu, tome 2 - La malédiction de Suli" but that's way too long so I just call it 'the thing with the aliens' because, really, that's what this is. A novel. With aliens. And a poor girl kidnapped and hailed as the saviour of a dying sect who want to resurrect a dead guy.

Now that I'm face to face with a few of my WIPs, I realized a lot of them have English titles, for some reason. I mean... I know why "La Fledgling" is called that (hint: it's because i couldn't find a good equivalent in French. Come on, jeune ? Débutante ? That's... not good. I'm not writing about a noble woman making her debut in society, be serious). But the others are just... choices. It sounded good and now it's stuck. Ok, maybe not 'the wishing star' because I don't like this title, but for WsT it's too late. I'm three books in, I can't go back.

Excerpt behind the cut, because this post is getting a little too long.

Excerpt:

"What do you want?" I asked her without giving her a chance to say anything.

As much as I hoped she would call me with something positive to say, I had known Anaëlle Charles since kindergarten. If she called me, it was always a bad sign.

"Jo, dear, I could use your help."

"Yes, I know. That's why I asked you what you wanted, moron."

I got up from my warm and cozy bed, still talking, put my phone on speaker the floor, and began to fumble for my clothes in the dark. Where the fuck was my left sock ? I was pretty sure my shirt was inside-out, but I doubted anyone would notice where I was going. Wherever that was.

Please dont let in be the swamps again, I prayed while putting my boots on.

"I'm... in trouble."

I was about to tell her that, yeah, obviously she was in trouble, she wouldn’t be calling at four in the morning if she wasn't, but something in her voice stopped me. It didn’t sound like the «I’m lost in the swamps again» kind of troubles, not even the «I think my magic is trying to eat me (again)» kind of trouble, both of which I could solve with my eyes close (mostly). It sounded… Like the bad kind of trouble. The one I wasn’t awake enough for.

Before I could ask her what the fuck was going on and why she sounded so… off, she went on, her voice almost as low as a sigh. Her breath sizzled in the receiver and I could hear her fingernails clicking against something metallic.

Ana was good at pretending, but she always ended up betraying herself.

"I'm at 23 Boulevard de l'Aube. Come get me. Hurry."

She pulled the phone away from her, shouted something I didn't understand, and hung up.

Tagging : @ladyniniane, @flowerprose and @amewinterswriting if you want to play (even tho it's not wednesday...)

[bumblerhizal-art]

Find the Word

Thanks for the tag @heniareth and also the second tag today that reminded me i left this on the backburner! This was a lot of fun, and for some of the words, forced me to actually work on the fics enough to make them presentable (although don't take that to mean these are anywhere near their final forms). Somehow, i did manage to scrounge together an already-written bit for each! It's a good thing Google Docs lets you search across all files at once is what i'll say lol

I've listed next to each excerpt which wip they come from and a quick few words about each because the day i get to the point immediately is the day i die

Going to tag you back in turn Heniareth as well as @wild-houseplant @badartxd @heapster-45 and @shadowkat678 to find the words drink, lie, warm, and/or cold! No pressure tho!

Follow (from Hidden - a still unanswered Tumblr prompt)

Novhen said, "Why don't you come sit with me while I wait for my strength to come back? There's still space for another."

Kieran cautiously stepped forward. As he turned the corner of the bench, he kept his eyes fixed on Griffon. Novhen followed his line of sight.

"Don't worry yourself about him," he said. "He's a smart dog. Wouldn't hurt a hair on your head."

Griffon huffed as though any other possibility would have been completely absurd.

Kieran sat down slowly. He now stared off into the distance, refusing to look Novhen or Griffon in the eye.

Stay (from The Diaries of Novhen Tabris - a translation of the personal journals of the Hero of Ferelden centuries after he lived, this excerpt is immediately post GoA and Witch Hunt)

17. Wintermarch 9:32 Dragon

Received a summons from the First Warden which Mistress Woolsey tells me must be acted on immediately. That's fine. I didn't need rest anyway.

In the time I've been gone, Soris apparently announced his engagement to a blackhaller's daughter. Shockingly, nobody took well to this. He's gone and eloped to Maker-knows-where. I've found a few letters on my desk from him dated to before his disappearance. He must think I've abandoned him.

This isn't going to mean well for the alienage either. Once the dust settles, we'll be without a bann or hahren. I'm going to arrange to speak with Alistair after I return from Weisshaupt, but until then, I have to assume management will return to the Arl of Denerim. If I try to stop through the city on the way, who knows how long they'll get me to stay for. Best to depart directly from Amaranthine and wait to deal with this until I get back, so they can keep me for however many months they demand.

Fish (from Rites of Passage - the retelling of Novhen's prologue)

Soris handed the sword, the shield, the bow, and the quiver one by one into Novhen's hands, and Novhen tucked them away one by one behind the folds of the fabric. 

“If anyone asks, you're delivering refreshments to Vaughan's quarters.” Adwen evaluated the cart, “This still looks like a one man job though. Soris, come here."

Soris looked up from where he was handing off Duncan's quiver. Adwen was walking towards a two tier pie with fish heads sticking out of the edges. He shimmied it off of the kitchen table, and Soris jogged over to take it off his hands. With bending knees and heavy breathing, the massive dessert was laid into Soris's arms.

"Say it needed extra care."

"We've already spent too much time on this. Let's go," Novhen gripped the cart’s handle. "Thank you, Adwen, more than I can say."

Light (from Gathering Frays - between Origins and Awakening)

He tried to listen to them through the walls and floors. He couldn’t tell exactly where they had run off to after tossing him in this room. It was possible they were interrogating [Alistair/Loghain] first. He tried to listen to their voices, but they were far too distant. It would be futile to try to make out their words even if they were speaking the Trade tongue, which, now that Novhen thought about it, seemed unlikely. A pod of Orlesians Wardens discussing top-secret matters in Ferelden were going to be speaking Orlesian. Maybe some of the older generation could speak it, but Novhen certainly could not.

The indistinct voices dissipated. A moment later, footsteps drew closer. A single person. Lighter step than most. Up the stairs and towards this room. Novhen straightened his posture and rose. The door creaked open.

It was the elf, Andras.

"Good morning, son. Would you please take a seat?" he spoke gently and with an Orlesian accent.

"Of course, ser."

The thought briefly passed his mind to take the seat at the head of the desk, but he shot it down. This was hardly the time to pull stunts. He carefully sat himself in the oak chair in front of the desk while Andras took the seat behind it.

[look-at-the-soul]

Hi! It's gossip girl!!❤️❤️ I'm glad your finally free!!! Tumblr really needs to get its life together!! Also happy late birthday!! I was gone for a bit and saw all the stuff about it a bit late but I hope you had a a amazing birthday!!❤️❤️❤️ 

And lol😂 I usually do remember sunscreen but this time me and my friends left a bit late and I didn't grab it😂 but after about a week of aloe Vera it's back to normal😂 And yeah I'm glad watching the pups went well!! Pups ARE the best! They are always so funny and cuddly!

And it's totally alright!! You didn't keep me waiting at all! You're always totally good with the time between!! It's never too long anyway!! And I did actually make more progress on some of my WIPs so that's good! I about doubled the word count of the Micheal story I've been working on for a bit but it's still not done😂 But the idea I'm actually the closest to completes is a random Bob x reader from Top Gun that's been stuck in my head and I wanted to finally write out even though I've only done Peaky stuff up to now😂 I did also kinda give in and end up making a mini second account to post random stuff and try to get back to interacting more, but it's still mainly me putting out small things and hiding again😂 

And for who I'm trying to get idk😂 maybe all the spam/p*rn bots that seem to be showing up in my tags😂 Tumblr bans the innocent but does nothing to stop those it seems🥲

And OH NO! That's would be terrible and scary to lose that many files and such😭😭 I hope your boss back then was able to  take responsibility for it though and didn't like blame you for his mistake! I've heard horror stories of that happening before! I'm sorry you had to restart it from the last save😭 I'm still at the point where I save and save as every now and then but for the most part I only have one copy:/. It'll probably screw me over done day though😂

And I love the idea of your Mary Poppins bag! I have something similar in my car!! It's got all the stuff I need incase I'm out and don't have it and too far from my dorm! My other bags are usually just a full but only contain multiple fidget objects or random items and pens I've found 😂 which surprisingly my random objects have come in handy at times so I can justify keeping them😂

And I'm not actually sure how the one of tests went😂 my teacher still hasn't given back the grade! He was supposed to and then my school closes down for the tropical storm again (which basically ended up missing our area so we're good) and we didn't have class that day!😂 But my other test went well and I got and A on it! So i did bit of a longer break due to the storm but I still can't wait for thanksgiving break in like a week😂 And I guess it was good that your plans to study elsewhere didn't move right before the pandemic! I can imagine how stressful that would have been! Maybe if you wanted to if would be better now, I guess the world has somewhat settled down a bit (in some degrees...)  I'm glad your week was good! I hope you got some good rest too and got around what needed to be❤️❤️

As always it was fun to interact with you❤️❤️ Lots of love! Xoxo!

Hi GG!!!

It’s good to be back!!! See @ staff? I didn’t do anything wrong 😇 I just post smut from time to time… 🙈 🥳 thank you sm for your kind wishes darling! I did ☺️💕 it was lovely to get all that love in here you know?

Oh no!!! Hope you got some nice tan at least? I gave up years ago, I looked like a sick ghost at 10 yo, will look like a sick wrinkled ghost at 84 yo so I don’t even try to get a nice color anymore 🤷🏻‍♀️ Oh I just LOVE dogs, have you seen those pup videos from car to car stopping over just to say hiiiii? I’m that kind of person 🤣🐶

I’m so glad because let me tell you a secret, sometimes I feel bad for not answering sooner! But between work, my 🐶🐶, writing, reading, etc sometimes I think I did something only to realize I did it only but in my mind, and when I look back, boom it’s been 5 days since I got the message. Sooooo you’re a Michael fan, what are your thoughts about that end? I’m happy to hear that you are working on your stories!!

I’m terrible at Top Gun stories (I hope I don’t disappoint you, but I never saw the movies 🙈🙊) but either way, it’s so so good to hear you’re getting inspiration, I hope you write this one!! ☺️ @ zablife writes TG stories, if you haven’t seen that account, I highly recommend. Ohhh how come you have a second account and I don’t even know about the first one??? 😋 don’t worry if you want to keep under the anon profile it’s all good!

You’re right, sometimes with the new tags content I get post promoted and I’m like tf? 😳 at something really explicit, and some friends got posts deleted over nothing, guess they are part of us sadly…

Haha I wish! No, I had to keep working on from where the file froze… luckily by then I had mastered the formulas, it’s alright, stuff like that happens and since then, I learned to not let my boss work around my excel 🤪 and make like 3 copies just in case he came to mess it up. Oh well if so far you’ve made it, it’s all good 😉

I recently added a small hair brush (travel size) to my bag, and a little “tide to go” for you know food accidents 🤣 soon I will need a bigger bag if I keep adding things. But yes, it’s so useful when you need something, specially a student like you, bet you have lots and lots of things for your notes 😊

How did the test go? I hope that by now you got a good grade back! Oh no, everything good with the tropical storm? Hopefully it didn’t leave lots of damage, and yay!!!! Congratulations for that A! ✨👏🏻👏🏻 Well done! Happy (belated) thanksgiving!!! Did you go back home for the holiday? Are you buying something from the crazy sales? The stores were so full last week!

Yeah, because I was planning to quit my job and just go to Boston 😂 life: sure haha now I have chickened out to be honest, I’m thinking I don’t know of different plans now like getting my own place, so maybe something online would be more fitting… who knows? 🤷🏻‍♀️ With everything that happened I decided to try to not make lots of plans (of course not getting on the irresponsible side either). Thank you it was 🤗 Hope you week was good and your weekend is even better!

Thanks for the chat! It’s lovely to ‘see’ you here 💙 sending back lots and lots of love your way! Ps don’t forget your sunscreen 😉 xx