touch telepath au? im v curious abt that!!!
Ahhh thank you, Abby!! 💜 admittedly, I wrote a little idea for this au back in August…and then completely forgot it existed 😅 but this idea has so much potential for an angsty fic…
uhh so I initially only had a few paragraphs of notes jotted down for this au idea, but as I was transferring them here, an actual story began to take shape in my mind?? I may or may not have an actual outline for this now (thank you so much, Abby, the credit for inspiring me absolutely goes to you 💜)
So, here’s a little something I wrote:
Tony is a touch telepath--
This leaves him touch-starved, for how can he touch anyone when doing so will mean knowing what they’re thinking/feeling? His touch telepathy is his greatest secret, has been ever since Howard and Maria realized when he was three. He grows up keeping to himself, making a show but never letting people close--
And then there’s Rhodey. Rhodey is safe.
Tony has felt safe before - in his mother’s arms, when he was with Jarvis and Ana. Whenever Aunt Peggy came for a visit. To a somewhat lesser extent, with Obie, whenever he came over when Tony was growing up. But Rhodey...
Rhodey is safe. He is the first person Tony chooses to tell; for a long time, he is the only person Tony tells.
Then there’s Sunset, who used him for technological advancements for her own gain. And Tiberius, who used their friendship against him, getting the media to see him as a playboy alcoholic and nothing else.
It’s not the first time Tony heard someone’s thoughts while they were hurting him (every kidnapping let him know exactly what his captors had planned for him, which, while did help him escape, did also let him know exactly what his captors had planned for him) but it’s the first of many betrayals.
He learns the pain of remembering is worse when the ghost of their touch to his skin brings back the force of their cruel intent.
Sex is... well. It’s easier to just have one-night stands, where people care more about how good he is in bed, than about him himself. It hurts less, in the long run.
Or so he tells himself.
At least it prevents him from getting betrayed again.
And then comes Pepper.
Pepper, he slowly comes to realize, is safe. So is Happy.
Afghanistan is...
The phantom touch of Yinsen’s hand will haunt him every time he allows himself to shake someone’s hand for the rest of his life. Even in Afghanistan, even at their first conscious encounter, after everything Yinsen knew he was responsible for, Yinsen had cared for him when they’d shook hands.
Rhodey is the only one he allows to treat him on the plane ride home.
Everything else about Afghanistan is better unsaid.
Obie touches him only twice when he takes the reactor from his chest. Once, on the back of his head, as he gently guides his head to the backrest of the sofa. It’s a painfully tender gesture; the final bow.
The second is an iron-clad grip to his chin that forces him to meet his eyes.
That’s when he realizes Obie never cared about him at all.
8 notes
·
View notes
at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"
like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.
"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."
... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.
and i'd still keep writing.
i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.
i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley
"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"
and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.
it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.
you create because you're greedy.
18K notes
·
View notes
Beloved Beyond Time
A DeadSerious Prompt where a young Damian follows his mother's advice about finding his future 'Beloved' and is smitten with a TimeTraveling Ghost King (Prince) Danny when his grandfather summoned the eldritch being.
Damian, despite being young, will want no other to be by his side once he takes over the League. Especially since the King was able to strike fear in his grandfather for even just for a moment.
Danny, whose just started taking up his soon to be Kingly title and duties, at first freaked out when a kid who just got out of toddlerhood is offering marriage. Who wouldn't. And well while he didn't fully encourage it, he found it a little adorable and tried to nudge the kid away from said... err crush feelings?
He was a little sad to have to say goodbye to the kid when his month long stay with the al Ghul's (mostly to see if they're worthy to keep the Pits) he was pretty for sure he'd never run into the kid again and if he did who knows how old they'd actually be because again.. time travel.
So Danny now at the age of 16 really wasn't expecting to be basically be cornered on his first day at his new school at Gotham Academy by a 17 year old Damian Wayne who is leaning over him and says "Hello Beloved. Time has been kind to you it seems."
Danny's poor half-alive heart is currently dying from being cornered by an older Damian.
Let this crazy train wreck begin.
3K notes
·
View notes
i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.
most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".
even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.
hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?
the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.
bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.
2K notes
·
View notes
It would be nice to hear from Wanda and Cosmo! It is kind of nice that you guys have two children like your own family does. Are you two still close to your siblings? Wanda has a sibling and Cosmo also have a sibling just like Timmy and Peri. Do they share some sibling stories to your children?
Wanda and Cosmo both reconnected with their siblings shortly after having Peri. Or, well. More like Blonda reentered their lives once she realized she had a baby nephew. Eventually, they slowly patched things up the more Blonda came to visit Peri.
Schnozmo was dragged back kicking and screaming. Mama Cosma refuses to have her sons live estranged lives now that she has a grandchild in the picture. Schnozmo doesn't know how to handle children, but he's doing his best.
Peri likes Schnozmo because he makes silly noises and funny stories. But he prefers Blonda's theatrics much more and loves playing Dress Up with her.
Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]
400 notes
·
View notes