#fic: life is for those who live

[princington]

The morning goes slightly differently this time. There are already a few people out for morning walks themselves when they leave the apartment to train and Beatrice makes a decision and reaches out and takes Ava’s hand.

...

Ava seems more delighted than surprised by the action, grinning as she bumps Beatrice’s shoulder while they walk, far from the usual grumpiness she gets from Ava this early in the morning.

Donation doodle for MacKing419545 on Twitter - from life is for those who live 🙏🏼

[lunarharp]

more phoenix wright situations

[necrotic-nephilim]

For the ask game

au where brudick happens but they keep it VERY hidden to the point only cass knows but she thinks everyone does cause to her it's so obvious, so one day on their monthly family dinner that no one misses she ask's them why they have different rooms when they always go to eachother during the night. What do you think would happen? Would they deny deny deny? would they ask her what she's talking about? how does everyone else react to this revelation? do the other heroes find out? do they have opinions about it?

for the ask game!

I LOVE THIS SHIT. truly love Cass noticing things she shouldn't and assuming they're common knowledge, it's my fave flavor. this is such a fun idea-

so Cass knows from like, day one. and obviously she never says anything bc she assumes this is normal. in a way, the weird vibes between Bruce and Dick *are* normalized to the Batfam, everyone sort of. tiptoes around their weirdness (even if they don't know it's romantic) so Cass learns to do the same. she doesn't mention it bc no one mentions Bruce and Dick's bond, it's only ever acknowledged with shared looks. it takes years before she has the courage to ask and i think it's fun if she asks for an utterly mundane reason. like, Alfred makes a teasing remark about washing everyone's bedsheets and what a task that is, and Cass just drops it into conversation that Dick's bed is rarely used because he's always in Bruce's, so that must make it easier to handle.

Dick was try to play it off as a joke. just the mention would make Bruce go silent, for once finally not having a contingency plan on how to handle something. he and Dick were never supposed to happen in the first place, it was so accidental he's never considered the possibility of someone finding out bc they're so careful, though in hindsight, of course he should've known Cass would've figured it out. Dick would awkwardly laugh, try to say something to the effect of "very funny, but we're not *that* close haha" just to break the tension. Cass doesn't give in, though. she's not the best at social cues and doesn't understand the desperate look Dick is giving her, trying to get her to drop it. she pushes on and corrects Dick, insisting she doesn't judge them for it. Bruce would finally snap back into reality and give a more serious denial, quickly changing the conversation before anyone else can press.

the issue is, the minute Cass says it out loud, it becomes *so* obvious. especially to Tim, who has the biggest "oh my GOD" lightbulb moment of his life. there is no unseeing it. it takes him a while to process how he feels about it, the same with everyone else. for a week, there's an obvious tension. no one will say anything, but everyone knows and is trying to sit with it to decide how they feel. it's not a simple situation to feel one way or another about. that's when the questions start. Tim asks Dick questions, Alfred asks Bruce questions. how old was Dick, how did it happen, all the things Dick and Bruce have never wanted to have to answer. bc none of the questions have clean answers. it was a slow and gradual relationship. sure, they can say the first time they slept together, but that doesn't *really* count as the start of things. the start goes back to when Dick was still a teenager, probably underage. even if nothing happened, they both knew. and the way they dance around the questions makes that obvious.

most of the Batfamily i think, would begrudgingly accept it. it's too late to convince Bruce and Dick out of it now, and at the end of the day, Bruce and Dick will always choose each other over anyone else. fighting it just increases the chances of getting ostracized and pushed away by the two of them. feelings vary. i think Alfred would be the least happy about it because he was there when Dick was just a 10 yr old. everyone else only has memory of Dick as an adult, but Alfred watched Dick grow up, raised by Bruce, so he just can't shake that image. Tim sees it as one of those things you just have to accept about Batman, and carefully considers his role as Robin and makes sure he focuses on making sure Dick is happy/safe as well as Bruce. if nothing else, Tim will put his feelings aside to be the Emotional Support Child. Barbara would distance herself from the Batfam for a while just to sit on it, because she also saw Dick as a kid and it sits wrong with her. long talks with Dick convince her to let it go, but she does keep a *much* closer eye on Bruce to be sure this doesn't become a pattern. i think she'd enlist Cass to make sure Bruce never shows romantic/sexual attraction toward other Robins. Steph and Jason are equally apathetic toward it, being the ones who are most negative toward Bruce. they just shrug and go "yeah sounds like some shit Bruce would do". Damian's a bit of a toss-up. i think it'd really throw him for a loop and he'd be far more critical of Dick in the beginning, but once he approves of Dick, he'd *really* latch onto him.

i do think the rest of the hero community would find out. not on purpose, but the leak happens. Babs vents her feelings about it to Dinah, Helena, and Zinda. Tim mutters about it to the Titans. and Jason will tell anyone who asks because he doesn't have a rat's ass to give about Bruce's precious reputation. (if anything, he'd purposefully try to ruin Bruce with that info) the hero community... varies. i think Oliver would be the *most* pissed. Oliver is very similar to Bruce, in that he's taken in his share of strays, but he was objectively a lot better at it than Bruce. it causes a minor public scandal when Oliver drinks too much at some gala and just. publically beats the shit out of Bruce Wayne, incoherently talking about something to do with him being a creep. i could see Oliver rallying support from people like Barry and Arthur who also have young sidekicks and would agree it being fucked up. i don't think Bruce would be entirely ejected from the hero community, but he would be quietly removed as a chair member of the Justice League and have most of his power as a team leader stripped. no matter how much damage control Dick does, insisting he was an adult when anything real happened and he consented, no one can look at Bruce the same. sort of a bittersweet ending, Bruce and Dick are together and no one can take that from them, but there's still realistic reaction and blowback to it, which i personally think is a lot of fun.

[goldkirk]

.

[doubledyke]

thinkin about edd today

[foxstens]

love thinking about kevin's first year post-graduation

[revenge-of-the-shit]

It's comforting to read fix-it fics where Padmé becomes Chancellor and fixes everything but these also miss part of the point. Palpatine didn't come to political power by himself. He rose to it, as she said, with thunderous applause. There were millions and millions of people out there who were in power who were complicit in the corruption of the Senate. It would be so, so interesting (and also so devastating and uncomfortably familiar) to see a story where Padmé becomes Chancellor and nothing changes at all beyond some surface level policies because she's surrounded by a body that refuses to do anything. If anything, some of the policies she'd pass would actively harm marginalized groups out of ignorance, given how she lives and breathes privilege and has no lived experience with what said groups go through.

[infizero]

every time i so much as think about that scene where light looks at porn magazines while scowling i go into hysterics its genuinely the funniest thing i've ever seen

[gideonisms]

Okay okay final degree paperwork finalized I THINK and I THINK I get to just move downstairs for $50 cheaper. So now I just need to focus on jobs & getting this place spotless

[jonathanbyersphd]

The wedding AU (which has a name maybe idk I'm between two) Can be summarized as "El is the only sibling with the braincell all weekend"

[sheliesshattered]

I think my tastes must just vary wildly from most people's, but I feel like the last several fanfics I've read have gone on for five or six chapters too many. I'll take an open-ended happy ending over wading through 15k+ words of a dense cloud of cotton candy overly sweet denouement in which every aspect of their perfect life together is explained in excruciating detail, and pet-names and 'I love you's are exchanged every other paragraph

[kneworder]

i have all these draft documents of half finished fics full of lines i love but that are so fundamentally flawed i can't figure out how to finish them and can't kill my darlings mercilessly enough to get past the roadblocks so i just reread them over and over and think damn this is kinda fire. wish it was anywhere near shareable.

[teetering-dinosaur]

i am begging, on my knees, every single fandom to start putting your reader insert fics under keep reading lines....... i am so tired of scrolling....... i have been scrolling for days

[bookwyrminspiration]

??? I’m 3/3 (4/4 if you count the robbing a human store moment in the wings au) of all my fics with tam in them including him getting medical supplies and treating the injury of the other person in the scene. why do I keep giving this guy first aid kits what is my subconscious doing

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

ngl i kind of miss the era of fics after hunting palismen but before season 1b where hunter slowly befriends luz’s friends and family under the guise of studying wild magic/espionage/whatever they were setting up with hunter spying on luz in season 2a that they didn’t have time to pay off in the show. and he finds a loving mother figure in eda and gradually realizes that belos and the emperor’s coven are bad before bravely standing up to his abuser and permanently moving into the owl house to be luz and king’s grumpy older brother.

i know his arc in canon didn’t go like that and tbh despite having more episodes to interact with him than darius or camilla eda ended up being like. the least parental towards him out of the three. but i really like that fic concept? not very action-y so i get why they played his arc out this way in the show but hunter’s heel turn in the show didnt. really feel like it was in his control? he has doubts about helping belos in every episode he appears in bc he was growing to care about luz and her friends. and ofc he finds out that belos is evil in hollow mind and ends his redemption arc by choosing to help hexside fight off the scouts.

but he was forced into all the realizations about belos by outside factors. he leaves the emperor coven not because he made an informed decision about how it was bad but because he knows belos would kill him if he didn’t leave the coven. and then when he helped the students at hexside it was because the teachers were about to trade him for gus if he couldn’t prove that he was trustworthy. i guess in the human realm he does get to learn what counts as a normal childhood and loving family, but that ties more into his post-redemption arc about found family rather than this being what makes him realize that belos was evil.

(this is also why i like to compare hunter to peridot from steven universe rather than zuko. i know on a surface level hunter and zuko are both angsty boys with a scar and an abusive father figure. but zuko had a journey bonding with civilians and the gaang where he learned why exactly the fire nation was wrong. and his decision to leave the fire nation, after zuko got back all his privilege and his fathers favor, was meaningful because it showed he was willing to give all that up to do what was right. meanwhile hunter, like peridot, had nothing left to lose by the time they join the protagonists. they fought against the villains because they were trapped with the protagonists and would die if they didn’t. i’d say even peridot had more agency in her redemption arc than hunter because she was given a chance to go back to homeworld but instead chose to save earth anyway and tell off yellow diamond.)

every confrontation between hunter and the villains during and after hollow mind was forced on him. in his earlier episodes, hunter did some small betrayals towards the coven to help luz and willow. but during the final part of his redemption (hollow mind & labyrinth runners, where he fully does a heel turn towards the protagonists’ side), saving gus from getting his sigil was the only major action he chose to do. in every other instance, his options were either help the protagonists or be killed.

this isn’t a bad thing. i like hunter’s character arc. it’s definitely more about coming to terms with one’s trauma than about anything bad hunter actually did. so they kind of brush aside his redemption arc once it’s over and the major focus is on what comes after. which i think is how toh does most of its redemption arcs? like with lilith or to a lesser extent amity. hell even mattholomule. once the character realize they’re wrong they get on the protagonist’s side and there isn’t much lingering tension about the harm they did. because once they’ve dedicated themselves to helping the protagonists, there isn’t much more they can do to make up for the past harm and toh definitely isn’t trying to preach anything about punitive justice.

so for hunter he realizes belos is evil and going to kill him in hollow mind and decides to help luz’s friends stop him in labyrinth runners. and after that he permanently joins the gang and helps fight belos and the rest of his arc is about finding himself after his redemption. which with how they wrote his backstory and arc so far i am more interested in this than seeing him haggle with the moral quandaries of working with belos and slowly realizing that he wants to be a Good Boy.

but man. those season 2a fics are so good. they’re like an au where hunter’s redmption arc is more like zuko’s than peridots and they give him a LOT more agency. in those fics he might get forced to stay with the owl family at first out of plot contrivance, but by the end he chooses his new family. and he chooses luz and eda and the rest of their friends and family over every privilege he had in the emperor coven, and over belos. and even though it might be a bit cliche, i still think that idea is really powerful.

[vivaciouscynner]

Divinity's Forgotten Birthday

Heads-up: The following takes place in my Divinity and Her Flaws universe because that's all I can think about. This occurs on some timeline after chapter 13 which is still being written. Do also note that I am writing this on a whim - time does not permit me to write well or proper at the moment. I'm so tired and busy BUT WITHOUT FURTHER ADO

---

Catra came back from visiting Mara who found Adora by her window. She held a little flower in her hand. It only had three petals with sharp points like a star. Adora loved any flower that changed color depending how the light hit it and this was no different. It reflected six colors if looked closely and more if you had Catra's eyes. It went from blue to purple to red to yellow and if you angled it just right, there was a bit of transparency and then finally a dark black. Each petal tipped with gold, the only part that wouldn't change.

"And what's this?" Adora asked.

"Oh nothing really, Mara sending you another invitation to see you again. I think she likes you more than me." Adora laughed at that. Catra then pointed to the window, "How's the fam?"

Adora smiled, trying to hide secrets the best she could. "Good," she said simply, "Actually, we wanted to talk to you about something."

"Oh?" Catra tried to glimpse into Adora's mind but could only see spotty blips of love for her. She raised a brow.

"Yep!" she said quickly, "I know you told me once that you must have had a 'beginning' and I wanted to share one of our traditions where we celebrate such begin-"

"You've given me a birthday?"

"If you want?" she opened her hands into a shrug. "I- we wanted to show you how much we care and are so thankful that you exist. So...," Adora held on to her amulet and thought of her family and in a moment the pools in the window revealed her family awkwardly holding a few poster signs. Adam let his rest on his foot. Marlena and Randor held theirs close to their chest.

Adora sank her fingers into the portal window and said, "She's looking now. Hold them up." Her family startled to the surprise voice in their heads and then held their signs up to the sky. They said in unison, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY CATRA!"

Adora retracted her hand and told Catra, "Happy Birthday, C'yra." She drew Catra, who seemed to be in awe, into a hug. When she didn't return the hug, she brought herself back, "Was this a bad idea?"

She blinked, "You gave me a birthday?"

Adora shrugged, "More like a day where we appreciate you and remind you that you're important to us. I may be a billion trillion eons too late, but you know what they say, better late than never?" Catra seemed expressionless. Adora was unsure if she was processing or hated the idea. "Erm, I'm getting never vibes...," she looked a little sorry and then realized her family was still holding the signs up. "Oh, right," she stuck her hands into the window again, "You're good guys, you can put the signs down. I'll uh... keep you updated." She turned back to Catra. "Um, Catra? Are you okay? I'm sorry if-"

Catra embraced her. The warmth enveloped Adora and there was a brief wave of euphoria that went down Adora's shoulders and back. "You give me little surprises?" Adora went, Mmhm. "You planned this without me knowing?" Adora went, Mmhm. A little smile rose to Catra's tail swishing back and forth. "And do you have any more surprises?"

Adora pulled back and kissed her. Then she said, "Maybe. if you're up for it?" Catra narrowed her eyes. "Please stop trying to read my thoughts, it is SO hard to block this." The both snickered.

"Show me."

Adora held her amulet and thought of her town center. As before, her fingers reached in. "She's watching now."

And a huge crowd suddenly gathered at the town square. Ten of them, at least, began to unravel a statue. It was Catra sitting cross-legged on the ground with several cats climbing over her. And Catra, a giant smile across her face. They looked to the sky, the view that Adora told them she'd be viewing and all shouted out on a count of 3, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY CATRA!" and cheered.

"I was going to do this last year but the statue wasn't ready and they didn't have a whole lot of references so..., it took a while. But hey, it sorta looks like you! And I gave them pictures of the guardians, er well, Mom did, I just sorta said hey can you give-"

"Adora." Adora went hm? Catra gently brushed back Adora's hair. A fingertip traced the edge of her ear as she Catra looked sweetly into her eyes. "How do I repay you? Hm?" She mocked the hm. "How do I treasure you like you deserve?"

Adora laughed, "That's just it, C'yra, you don't. Today is all about you. And getting reminders that we appreciate you and love you. So, how 'bout we head down there and hear what they all have to say? Hm?"

Divine finger raised and placed upon Adora's forehead. Then a smirk. Then she tilted her head at Adora to hear a bit more truth of how she was able to keep a secret from her so well.

With a roll of her eyes, "Okay fine. Scorpia, Perfuma, and Mermista did most of the work. It was my idea like 2 years ago. They set it up, didn't tell me, and then surprised me with it only a couple days ago. But I still did it, even if it was a couple days. You should be impressed!"

She was. "I am, actually." She gave Adora another kiss and off they went to meet the people who celebrated her.