#writing from the void

[supernovaa-remnant]

Crawling Back to You

Rated M | c!Dreambur | 7.5k words | Complete

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Wilbur murmurs. I could say the same to you, Dream doesn’t say, but whatever response he would’ve actually given dies in his throat when Wilbur cradles his face gently in his hands. There’s an unreadable emotion in his eyes, something that Dream really has no hopes of deciphering, but he thinks it might look something like devotion, and the thought makes his head spin. “It was silly to worry,” Wilbur continues. “Of course you’d come back.” Or, during his experiments with the revive book, Dream figures out how to move between limbos. This results in him spending a lot of time in a certain train station with a certain dead man.

New c!dreambur fic!! (and my first fic of 2025?? crazy lol)

[a-space-in-the-void]

Oops wrote a thing

Its Lucifer/Alastor's Shadow and I fully blame the discord for it so.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

got a worm nibbling my brain. can someone help me find a piece of obscure media?

webcomic/indie comic from the 2010s. basically a sci-fi short story about a young girl (with red hair?) who was being raised by scientists as part of an experiment. she receives a haircut/has her head shaved, in preparation for her annual brain scan/testing. it is revealed that while her body is human, her "brain" is artificial, made of computer implants throughout her skull and spine. at some point her biological mother (also a scientist on the same campus?) encounters her and is repulsed, viewing her as a machine who has murdered her daughter.

it was very poignant and it bruised my heart and i can NOT find it anywhere

[diddlydootheiconic]

im so sick over them :(

[always-a-king-or-queen]

The Pevensies are foreign when they return home.

The streets no longer know them. They do not seem to fit in their own bodies as they stroll the cobbles, Lucy’s hand tucked carefully into Peter’s, Edmund trailing watchfully behind Susan like a shadow. Their eyes are sharp, their smiles crooked, and those who see them cross to the opposite side of the road, afraid of the ancient gleam they see reflected back at them that does not belong in the eyes of a child.

Water murmurs to Lucy when she flits past, and lamplight follows her wherever she goes, even in broad daylight when the lamps are unlit. Their flames sputter into existence when she walks by, flickering at her in a way that seems to whisper I know you. Lucy looks at them with feral teeth and smiles, and vines twist from the cobbles at her feet. She laughs like a wild thing, eyes glowing, but a moment later she blinks and it is gone. Her feet hardly seem to touch the ground at all as she darts through the alleys.

The sky is clearer when Peter walks the streets, clouds vanishing like they were never there at all. His eyes are too much like a lion’s, struck through with gold and filled with a brooding fierceness, yet he laughs as he twirls Lucy around, and claps Edmund on the back as they share a stupid joke, and smiles with Susan when she tells him of the bow she plans to carve. He is all warmth and friendliness, but there is something about his eyes. There is something about all of their eyes.

The sun caresses Susan as she moves about, and she is graceful, too graceful, her hair seeming to be alive of its own accord as she steps lightly along the streets. Her skin is pale like ice, and sometimes her gaze appears almost silver as she stands by the river, gazing into its depths with a distant, siren-cold smile. She is gentle, but her fingers look a little too long sometimes. Her laugh is a little too unsettling.

Trees lean towards Edmund when he walks past, branches scraping his clothing, leaves showering around him. Books and journals and pages covered in notes perpetually fill his arms, spilling from his grasp but never quite falling. His voice is even-keeled, quiet, but there is something wild about it, something unhinged. He speaks of things none have ever heard before, dark hair falling into his eyes, mouth unsmiling and hands perfectly still, and for a moment he seems to be someone else, fangs beneath his lips, dirt on his tongue. He tilts his head just a little too far, sometimes.

The Pevensies are foreign when they return home. They do not fit their bodies. They do not fit the streets. People who encounter them cross to the other side of the road to avoid them, terrified of the oldness they see in the children’s faces. Such depth does not belong in the gaze of a child.

And yet four sets of eyes, ancient and deep and flickering like candlelight, stare out from the children’s faces, and their smiles are sharp, too sharp. Their laughter is a little too wild as they walk, the oldest and youngest hand-in-hand, the middle children trailing each other like shadows.

There is something about those children’s eyes.

There is something about those children.

[ailithnight]

"This is healing."

"This?" he breathed. "This is suffering. In what world could this ever be healing?"

They paused, seeming to gather their words. "When you have an infection," they began, gentle and certain. "Your immune system doesn't ask it politely to leave. It attacks. Wages war against the foreign invaders. It is violent; miserable; painful even." They turned to him. "It is still healing."

[cent-scratchnsniff]

hoptal

[nekrosmos]

Nikolai and Price going to an evening game of poker with some of Nik's "friends", John sitting with his guard up as he's surrounded by a group of dangerous international criminals, all of them carrying guns, all of them glancing at him with a curious look. Price is uncomfortable but doesn't show it, while Nikolai is awfully relaxed considering the situation.

The evening goes on, drinks, cigars and hearty laughs are shared around the table, the bets reaching numbers Price doesn't even make in half a year. It would be a problem, if he wasn't winning most of the rounds, piles of cash gathering around him as he feels the tension build in the room. One of the younger guys, another russian speaker, starts getting an attitude about it around two hours in, and Nikolai immediately puts him in his place with a single sentence Price doesn't understand, his voice booming, as intimidating as he could be, a heavy silence falling inside the room as the lad with an attitude sits back down, eyes not even daring to look at Nik. The silence is only broken by Nik again, a warm laugh leaving his lips and the other men joining him, their nervousness barely hidden.

It had been so easy for Nik to command the room, and even after the tension had diminished, Price could see how much respect these men had for him, while also clearly being scared shitless of the man. Price had rarely felt more attracted to him as he did at that moment, and the wink and smirk Nikolai gave him when he noticed him looking in his direction absolutely did not help.

John eventually left the table, excusing himself for a moment but squeezing Nik's hand briefly as he got up, moving deeper in the building they were using for their game.

A minute later and it's Nik's turn to excuse himself, quickly finding Price who immediately grabs him by the collar of his open shirt and presses his lips against his, Nik hungrily returning the kiss and pushing John against a nearby wall.

When they return to the table, hair tousled, face flustered, all it takes is one glance from Nikolai to shut the others up. This is his territory, this is where he's comfortable, surrounded by dangerous men who show him respect and never dare to cross him.

It's easy for John to forget how natural this all is for his partner, and if Nikolai brought him here tonight to assert his dominance and show off a little, just so he could impress John, well, that mission sure was a success.

[brainmuncher]

Many years ago, in a different country, a set of twins were born. In another room, a runaway league of assassin also gave birth to a baby boy.

To punish the runaway, a hit was put on their newborn son. The assassin silently traversed the hospital and grabbed the baby from off the cart as the nurse was distracted.

After successfully securing the child the assassin ran off into the woods behind the hospital. They grinned to themselves as this was their first mission and glad to have made such a great success. Preparing a dagger in one hand they raise it above the child to strike when...

The wristband on the baby twisted to look at them, and with horror, they read the last name 'Grayson'.

They kidnapped one of the Grayson twins...

In a panic, they threw the baby into the woods and fled back to the hospital. But by the time they got there to kill the real baby they were sent for it was too late. The runaway assassin and the child were gone.

Meanwhile, two ectobiologists scour the woods behind a hospital on their honeymoon. What better way to celebrate marriage than with ghost hunting in a new country!

Then they hear the sounds of crying... suffering spooks! Is that a baby? Well we already have our daughter... why not give her a new baby brother :)

Dick notices that Talia gives him a weird look whenever she sees him. It's one that he has never seen her wear towards any of the other bats, so it bothers him.

Then one day after Damian and him defeat an assassin sent to kill Damian Talia shows up and says something that makes Dicks blood run cold.

“I'm so glad that you're the Grayson twin that hadn't been killed.”

[copdog1234]

War never changes. War never changes. WAR NEVER CHANGES.

That is the entire point of the series. That is especially the point of the show. War does not change.

Humanity was trying to rebuild, yes. But the entire point is literally that any one single selfish arrogant human can cause it to end it again. War can happen again. War will happen again. It is an endless cycle. And as people covet power, the whole thing will eventually topple.

That is why it is not a whole country that ended the world, it is a handful of heads from corporations.

That is why it is not a whole faction that "ended" the NCR, it is a single man from a bygone era who had a hand in ending the world the first time, that does it.

And I think that New Vegas showed us that the NCR was kinda crumbling already, too. The "fall of Shady Sands" wasn't the bomb itself, it was the beginning of the NCR's struggles. If I'm recalling New Vegas' plot correctly, the NCR was already struggling to hold the wasteland, to integrate people into it. There were resource shortages, it was getting too big, they had other factions battling them for power, and maybe your actions as a player had some pull either direction, but it's possible it wouldn't last.

If it wasn't a bomb, something else could've ended it at some point, too. Because war doesn't change.

As long as there's resource shortages, as long as there's mistrust, as long as people don't learn right from wrong, and as long as people muddy right from wrong.

That's the show, that's the games. Maybe the writing of that isn't always the best, but that's what it dwindles down to.

It is not a retcon, it is the main idea. It is not a "dumb take," it is how the world is.

Even in real life, there is sometimes hope and some things improve, but it doesn't stay improved, ever. Hope and despair comes in waves.

And war never changes.

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[supernovaa-remnant]

all is lost (hope remains)

c!dreambur | 3.2k words | hurt/comfort

It makes the cell feel like a confession booth, and Dream is seconds away from falling apart in Wilbur’s hands as he recites his sins and begs for forgiveness. It makes it feel like Wilbur holds the secret to atonement, like Dream could reach eternal salvation if he just follows the other. But they’re not holy. They’re nothing more than a pair of sinners kneeling in a box where hope dies, a former corpse and a monster of a man finding only the briefest of respites with one another. Or, Wilbur spawns in the prison when Dream revives him.

Hi @c-rivalsduo!! I was your secret santa :3 Here's some c!dreambur angst & hurt/comfort for you with revivedbur. I hope you like it!

Thank you @dreblrsecretsanta for putting together this event

[shrimpchipsss]

read Living With a Tiger by x_los !

[laufire]

okay is it still too soon for me to say that I thought these two panels took me out of the story lmao.

Duke calling Jason a cunt could've been funny as hell, but honestly? I think the two of them giving each other shit face-to-face is too fundamentally different from Duke insulting him while he's not present. Those things show two distinct types of relationships to me and this made the moment feel out of nowhere, to be blunt.

"If I pulled a fraction of what Red Hood pulled..." In his last appearances (going back to over a year, my god... it's rough here), Jason has 1.) gotten brainwashed/chemically crippled by his father, 2.) accepted a plan that required him getting killed by his father's robot proxy, 3.) gotten chased by the cops and by Batman himself when he dared go after the Joker. He was also pointedly not present in that cheerful "this is our new family home!!" reunion (where Duke was); it wasn't mentioned whether he refused to attend or wasn't invited, but no one raised any questions about his absence so I think assuming the latter is safe.

If Duke acted the way Jason does (even if that hasn't included murder in years now, tragically xD), he might be shunned from society (YMMV on the Bats)... and so has Jason LOL. If Duked acted like Jason, yes, his race would likely get him treated even worse (for example, in TMWSL, chances are the cops wouldn't have just said they're happy with waiting for the good news that Jason's got stabbed in prison, instead of dealing with the paperwork themselves if he comes to harm on their watch). But well. It's a moot point because Duke doesn't act like Jason. Duke and Jason are on different sides of the line. Jason is explicitly on one that is considered unnaceptable by the other Bats and polite society in general, even one that has grown to accept other forms of vigilante violence.

Duke's vigilantism is more comparable to those "accepted" vigilants. If you were going to point out how white privilege lets some Bats get away with things that Duke would get judged far more harshly for... Bruce and his steady relationship with law enforcement while he performs unlawful surveillance, b&e, arrests, etc. vis a vis how many times Duke got in trouble with them when he began as Robin is a much better example.

Doylist-wise, this is just a writer picking the morally "worst" Bat as a point of comparison without pondering if the comparison holds up. Watsonian-wise... I can make it make sense for me. I can think of it as Duke now being on the same train of scapegoating Jason as the others are; of how it'd happen, and why. If I was a prime-earth-canon fic writer I would run away with that and dig deep into it. What I can't agree with is the idea that these panels hold some "objective" truth about the dynamics at play, or the idea that they are in line with previous characterisation without accounting for some change in the middle *shrugs*.

[kriz-smthn]

[a-ramblinrose]

“But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing—an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness—wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak—to be company.”

― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays