#i'm not even sure i should put this in the main fandom tag | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ms-demeanor · 8 months

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i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post

I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.

First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.

Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."

You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."

"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.

(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)

So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.

But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).

someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out

A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.

partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:

This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.

(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")

This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.

This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.

Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.

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54625 · 1 month

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I'm not sure if this is the end for the QSMP, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were shut down soon after this.

The eggs have been the lifeblood of the server since they were introduced, and having some of them permanently gone from the server is devastating for so many reasons, and bodes terribly for the future of this project. My optimism has run out. I will still wait for updates but I have no hope.

However, I wanted to write a piece for the community here on Tumblr. I know we're all very emotional right now, because while we have no confirmation that the QSMP will permanently close, we now have good reason to assume there might just be no other clear path out of this.

To the community:

Do not feel like you have to stop loving the server and everything it created. Do not stop creating art. Do not stop sharing why you loved the characters and the story and the world.

To completely boycott everything QSMP, you are discrediting the incredible work that the admins put into the server purely out of passion and the kindness of their hearts. Do not waste their sacrifices. Talk about the server and everything they did for it, give them recognition, let them know we love and appreciate all the time and care they poured into this project. Thank them by caring about their work that they put so much of themselves into.

To completely boycott everything QSMP, you are ignoring the beautiful friendships it created between content creators who otherwise would never have met, and the way it ignited such a fierce determination to learn about others' cultures in them. You are forgetting how much these streamers strived to tell engaging, relatable, fun stories, by themselves or with each other, and to have their fans talk about how much they liked their newest lore. You are refusing to acknowledge the effort put in by everyone on the project to tell amazing stories through the language barrier.

And to completely boycott the QSMP, you are denying yourself the fact that you loved this server; the eggs, the streamers, the stories, the cultural events, the laughter, the sadness, the friendships, the ship ships, the builds, the mods, the languages. You are part of this server for enjoying it's wonderful vitality and beauty and hilarity. As a community, we all are.

I have had my gripes with the QSMP fanbase, as anyone has gripes with the dysfunctional mad household they live in, but at the end of the day, I love it so much. This has been my first time actually being part of a fandom; interacting with people and sharing my art and my ideas, getting into silly debates and arguments, running my mouth off more than I should. I love this bizarre toxic fandom for all of it's worth; I love the fanfic writers (even if I think their characterisation is terrible), I love the fanartists (even if they give Pac those yellow scleras that always make me think of jaundice), I love the live bloggers (even if they clog up the main tag), I love the people who write analysis, the people who make animations and animatics, the people who webweave, and all the other things people in this fandom do to interact with the media we all collectively love and bond over.

We do not need to let this be the end of our community, as we can still share our admiration for the hard work put into this project, lift each other up, express praise where it is warranted.

And we can talk to each other, we can vent about how this has negatively effected us (provided we tag it appropriately 👁️👁️) and respond in kind to those seeking someone to speak to who relates.

The QSMP taught us the value of communication. While behind the scenes, it itself did not abide by it's own rules, we can. The QSMP itself is not the figurehead of communication; the content creators and the fans it sent this message to are. We can be an example of what the QSMP should have stood for.

I do not love the deeply flawed execution of the QSMP, but with my whole heart I love the idea; the ambition, the goal. It was noble. It, to some extent, worked.

It united communities.

Let it unite ours.

#discource #qsmp

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victimsofyaoipoll · 3 months

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Round 1

Propaganda under the cut

Alana Bloom

she kissed will graham in s1 and dated hannibal in s2 so you can imagine how bad the fandom is to her. fun fact she's in a canon lesbian relationship now tho <3

The show literally does the yaoi treatment of victimisation for the benefit of the male leads to her. And then the fandom mistreats her

I'm not sure if this even counts but...Literally a victim of Yaoi along with several other characters in-series, but she got it almost the worst. The entire show is just people dying because the two male leads are OBSESSED with each other and can't be normal about anything. Alana Bloom, actual PhD of psychology and consultant to the FBI, got kissed by one guy, fucked and fed people-meant by the other, and pushed out a window by the murder husbands' forced-surrogate daughter. Like. Actual victim of several crimes caused by yaoi. She's probably one of the few examples of a Yaoi Victim overcoming and evolving past her yaoi-related trauma into a stronger person/character, though: She gets an entire character overhaul and a hot, millionairess for a wife. She kills a man with an eel. She becomes head of the BSHCI, effectively putting her in complete power over her jackass cannibal ex-bf. She does quite well. Unfortunately, the rest of her screen time is spent trying not to get killed in the ongoing fallout of Hannibal and Will's fucked up courtship, but hey. Can't have everything. I don't even know if I'm saying anything valid here: the fandom loves her, but I supposed her position outside of the Hannigram relationship relegates her to a non-subject in a lot of Hannigram-focused fanwork. She's an 'obstacle' to their relationship only in the sense that Will had a crush on her once that went nowhere and Hannibal started an actual relationship with her SPECIFICALLY to piss off Will. I guess she's also a more literal obstacle as Hannibal's jailer and Will's friend who's constantly pointing out to him that Morals exist and he should try having some of those, maybe

Maya Fey

OKAY SO She's definitely NOT the love interest coz she's like 16 n he's 24 or smth but in literally all fandom she's just... the wingwoman. that's all. EVEN WHEN SHE'S IN A LESBIAN RELATIONSHIP IT'S IN THE BACKGROUND N SHE'S SUPPORTING THE YAOI GROWN ASS MEN..... it's horrible... detestable... she's a main character... she has ARCS..... and yet.. her own most popular ship tag is just.. her n her gf as background yuri who are supporting and wingwomaning the fucking main guys. it's a tragedy. Maya Fey would make Phoenix Wright buy her burgers everytime he made her listen to his love problems and then she'd tell him that every complaint he makes will cost another burger. SHE WOULD NEVER BE SUPPORTING YURI..

Phoenix’s best friend and partner in solving crimes. She often gets shunted aside by the fandom, reduced to Phoenix/Edgeworth cheerleader and matchmaker.

okay i wouldnt say shes exactly mistreated, shes pretty well liked in the fandom, HOWEVER shes always seen as like an accessory to wrightworth, her only role being to make jokes about how in love they are etc. i feel like a lot of people ignore her depth and backstory to just use her as a tool in wrightworth stories. she plays a very important role in the games as well and has been through a lot, and has always been helpful to wright, so she deserves to be more than the setup to a joke about wrightworth

#round 1 #poll #alana bloom #hannibal #nbc hannibal #maya fey #ace attorney

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gallavichthings · 8 months

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Hoping you can put this out for all of the artists and writers that participate in your events. Just wondering how everyone deals with the feeling of posting something and having it completely flop? Those of you that have had it happen, how do you come back from that?

Hello, dear anon! I'm posting this so that anyone who wants to reply may do so, as you requested, but I also wanted to include my own two cents.

First of all, let me tell you I absolutely understand your frustration. It can be very off-putting to post something you put effort into to just have no one apparently notice it. There are a lot of posts saying how we should write/make art for ourselves, and not for others, and while I agree with those to a certain extent, once you actually post something, the goal is clearly to have it noticed by your peers.

That being said, I do encourage you to try to redefine what a flop means. Is it no notes at all? Because I hardly think you're getting no notes at all, especially in this fandom (but if you are, maybe there's something off with the way you're "marketing" it, so let me know and maybe we can help).

I assume by flop you mean getting less notes than you'd expected, so I think it's a matter of expectations. Are you comparing yourself to others? Because let me tell you right away, that won't do. Some people are more popular, period, and who knows why that is. Sure, most of the time these people are really talented, but usually it's that they make something that resonates with people, but I couldn't tell you why some do and some don't. It's absolutely impossible to predict what the fandom will or won't like. Even if you compare your works with your other own works, that will happen. I can't tell you the amount of times I've written something thinking people would love it only to get just a handful of kudos, while some other fics I've written on a whim, thinking no one would care, got way more attention.

Number three: give it time. Sometimes things aren't appreciated right away, but eventually they get further. I still get daily kudos on fics I wrote 8, 9, 10 years ago.

Finally, and this is a message to everyone, not just the anon who sent the ask: this is why fandom is important, and this is why you have to share the things you enjoy. Leaving likes/kudos is a great thing, but once you reblog it or add it to a recs list, that's when other people get to know stuff. That's literally my main job here, that's the reason I created this blog, so it would be an archive for the fandom. Yes, I organize events as well, and I answer asks and all, but the main point of this blog has always been and will continue to be reblogging. (I unfortunately don't have as much time to go through the tags as I used to, which is why I have my dear @sickness-health-all-that-shit helping me out, but it's still possible we miss things, so you're always welcome to tag me or send me your posts if you notice it's been a week or two and we haven't reblogged them yet - please do wait a bit though, as we do have a queue to go through.) Also, please do leave replies/comments/tags, those are so important and encouraging to the artists/authors!

I hope this eases your heart a bit, anon. And I look forward to seeing what everyone else will say.

Cheers,

GT mod.

#mod post #fandom #Gallavich #tagging the last one only for visibility

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fenrislorsrai · 6 months

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Firefish - a twitter alternative

TLDR: Looks like twitter, functions better. Lets you interact across multiple platforms. Allows NSFW. Has built in anti AI scraping.

If you ever used Twitter, it's going to look similar in structure, so the learning curve is low. There's more features that that, but they're not so intrusive you HAVE to learn them right away but also aren't hard to find. It's a nice balance.

The big difference is post length- it allows up to 8000 characters, so like Mini-Tumblr.

one of the features I like that familiar's but better is if you hover cursor over name on desktop is it pops up the profile for the person and a follow button. So you can immediately hover over name and get context about the person posting when it's not someone you already follow. Is this health info being posted by a professional or by someone that thinks you should stick rocks in your vagina?

That feature also means its incredibly easy to follow people regardless of the instance. On Mastodon it was extremely annoying to follow people. If that the thing that put you off Mastodon, Firefish fixed that and made it better than Twitter.

Firefish runs off ActivityPub, so it lets you follow and interact with anyone using the plugins for that. So includes Mastodon, WordPress, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Misskey, and Tumblr is allegedly developing an integration to run it.

Okay, NSFW content! We're about to get slightly in the weeds here. whether NSFW content is allowed is generally by server. When you go to join Firefish, it'll ask you what server you want to use and it'll tell you about rules. If you want NSFW, pick one that allows!

That's it. If you picked one that did not, it generally won't allow you to follow things that do or boost stuff from a location that did.

NOW, A GREAT FEATURE! Spoilering stuff is super easy on Firefish. Just click the button! Say you see something you wanna boost but its *not* spoilered. You can boost AND spoil the image/text of the quoted item! MAGIC.

now, on to antennas.

The Antenna feature on there lets you track tags or users in a separate panel so you can see it in one spot. You can also add NEGATIVE tags to the antenna. So say you want to see news about your city. So you set the main tag as the City. But you don't want sports news. So you can put in negative tags of sports, specific sport names, and individual teams in the city. And then you get news about the location, but no sports

For fandom purposes, you can use it to filter out things you just don't vibe with. hate that one ship? BEGONE.

PROFILES: you can stick hashtags in your profile and it'll turn up in searches easily. also it will ask you "are you a cat?" If you say yes, it gives your profile pic cat ears.

Overall when I'm posting links to Firefish posts (or posts via something from ActivityPub hosted sites that I interacted with via Firefish), so far it renders the preview link well on most platforms. I'm not sure how it works for embedding a whole message into a static page (like you could do with Twitter for news articles).

AN IMPORTANT NERDY NOTE: okay, you wanna sign up for Firefish now. Select from the servers offered some have different rules restrictions and some have Non-english default languages. Pick the one you like. If you pick Firefish.social itself that one IS the largest but also it gets day one code updates... so sometimes it gets funky or won't load properly for a few hours. If that will drive you bonkers, pick *any* other server. The server size is almost irrelevant because Firefish plays so well with other services!

also, if you don't see one today, check again in a few days! admins rotate through open enrollments to keep the growth rate managable. also, if you're *that* kind of nerd, you can host your own server. Even with only YOU on it. and it still interacts normally with the rest of the ActivityPub servers!

#firefish #twitter #social media #mastodon #microblogging

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liesmyth · 4 months

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hi! I've been doing some worldbuilding for a hypothetical Tenth House for oc og Lyctor reasons, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the subject? how would you go about it? Sorry if this is a weird ask :)

This is a super interesting idea to consider! I'm throwing it in the main fandom tags and if anyone has anything to contribute please jump in.

I'd never considered this until today, but some thoughts off the top of my head:

History: Since the Houses are named in the order they were founded, I think the OG founder(s) should be a second generation Lyctor & cavalier pair, born in the Houses. The reason why I suggest the OC should be part of the founder group for this Tenth House, rather than just a necromancer from there (like how the Seventh House existed when Cytherea was born; she didn't found it) is because we know that Anastasia DID found the Ninth, and the Tenth would've presumably come after.

Location: the Tenth House installation shouldn't be as far out as the Ninth, for two reasons. One, because the Ninth's whole thing is that they're from the ass backwards middle of nowhere, and them having a close neighbour would cause too many ripple effects that I'm not sure you want. Second, for logistical reasons - I think it's easier to get a House up and running in the limited time between Anastasia establishing the Ninth (or beginning to) and the Lyctors ascending and leaving the system, if they're closer to the rest of the population and have more immediate access to resources.

My suggestion would be to put the Tenth House near Juppiter (Fifth) Saturn (Fourth) or on Ceres (asteroid belt, between Juppiter and Mars/Second House.)

In the first case, the Tenth could be a off-shot of the wealthy and influential Fifth House, or alternatively a Fourth House splinter group. Both of those are gas planets, so presumably the Fourth and Fifth are also based on satellites, but there are so many satellites to go around there that you're spoiled for choice.

In the second case: Ceres is a dwarf planet with a rocky surface, which makes theoretically possible to build an installation on it. It's in the middle of the asteroid belt (so there'd be some difficulties navigating back and forth with whatever resources you need to build a liveable installation) but relatively close to the Fifth / the Second / even to Earth, which is a plus in terms of actually packing up said resources. wikipedia tells me that it's pretty stable in terms of tectonics.

What does the House DO? That would depend on what you need your OC Lyctor to do, in terms of necromantic specialty and any other stuff. If it's an off-shot of the Fifth, maybe something soul / blood / spirit related; if they schismed from the Fourth, a different interpretation of thanergetic fission? If it's in the astreroid field, maybe the House is involved in training up pilots for the Cohort, or stele travel. But I think I would reverse-engineer this part depending on what you need for your OC

#Anonymous #tlt worldbuilding #tlt #ask

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seiya-starsniper · 2 months

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Another Get To Know Me Game!

Tagged by @windsweptinred, this was so much fun to do! Love seeing a new version

Who was your first fictional crush?:

Hmmmm, instinct says Tuxedo Mask! I'm sure I had other fictional crushes but that's the one I most vividly remember. That and Xanatos from Gargoyles djdoaisjdoaij.

What’s the first colour you think of when I tell you to think of a colour?:

Purple!

Which fanfiction emotionally scarred you and still makes you shudder to this day?:

Oh there's...a few lmao. I have a tendency to read fics that horrify me for fun, and since we're on the webbed site that likes to judge people for using the Dead Dove tag, or any of the main Archive Warning tags, I'd rather not put those fics on blast. But I have read some truly brilliantly written and fucked up fics from the Fantastic Beasts fandom, that's all I'll say.

I’m coming to your house for dinner, non-negotiable, what are you making me?:

Japanese curry with chicken! That or Fettucine Alfredo. I like to overstuff my guests with food and those are my two go to meals for company!

Do you prefer lions or kangaroos?:

Lions! I love kangaroos too, but my love for cats, especially big cats, prevails.

Which fictional villain do you brush past the glaringly obvious issues for because you really like them?:

Uhhhh....almost all of them??? jkjkjk

In all seriousness though, I think my big ones I can think of are Shigaraki and Dabi from BNHA. Are they both awful, ruthless people who only want to cause pain and suffering to all who have hurt them? Yes. Do I want them to keep causing even more pain and suffering, even to my favorite hero characters, as a treat? Also yes.

I hate to caveat that in no way do I think any of of their actions are justified and that the villains should win and then the world would be a better place yada yada yada but well. Woobifying villains is a thing and also why I stay out of the fandom because I cannot stand my faves being defanged like that. Let my faves be horrible people aoijdosijad.

What would accompany your picture in the Burn Book in Mean Girls?:

Either the "Mexican Asian" (I'm Filipino-American, and sadly this is a thing I was called a lot lmao) or "The Hugger." I know a shit ton of people judged me a bit in school for being a hugger because...idk, people thought hugs were weird lmao. But joke's on them, I still enjoy hugs and Mr. Seiya hugs me all the time!

How many days would you last in the universe of your favourite fandom?:

Uhhhhhh considering no one really dies in Pokemon...I'd be fine lmao.

In Sandman???? Also would probably be fine since I'm based in the States and also many many miles away from the Corinthian's hunting grounds 🤣

Have you heard of Mischief Theatre?:

Only the name :(

Do you feel sorry for Medusa?:

Yes and no. I do feel bad the foundation of her story was be a woman killed for the glory of a man. And then to be remembered only as a horror, a monster to scare people with.

The modern interpretation of her story is absolutely fascinating to me and while it is still a tragic story, I absolutely love what she's come to represent. I love that her story has been rewritten to be a story of survival, of perseverance, of power even.

Which song makes you think of your OTP?:

Ooooooh there's so many! And of course now that I'm being put on the spot I can't think of any 🤣🤣

Starlight by Muse is definitely a Dreamling song to me, so much so that I wrote a fic with the lyrics in the title, so I'm going to roll with that one!

Which song makes you disassociate and daydream the fastest?:

Oh lord, honestly any Taylor Swift song will do this to me lmao. Lately, I've been drifting back to Would've, Could've, Should've, so we're going to go with that one!

No pressure tagging: @tj-dragonblade @bazzybelle @verminetroglodyte @tryan-a-bex @4typercent and anyone else who wants to play!

#seiya gets tagged #this was fun!

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fateinthestars · 28 days

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Hello! Gathered the courage to put in a prompt for fic - completely up to you if you'll take it :D Yesterday I had dream (sign I should take a break lol) about SCM: I woke up in Hue's room. Everything looked like I was transported from real world to anime/genshin like graphic world. I instantly recognized my surroundings and launched myself from the bed to the pool ont he floor. I needed to check out how I looked and sure enough, my features changed like under anime filter. So the prompt: Isekai'd reader, who played the game before and basically both Clotho and game MC are her avatars, extension of herself in the game world. How would Hue take this revelation that MC is gone, replaced by the puppeter, who is essentially the blend of the two women he loved and at the same time not quite so? Because whilist the reader's feelings towards Hue were and are real, the reader couldn't excatly regulate the actions and speech of the in game avatars (Clotho and MC) and therefore reader's personality is bit different. Really... I just wish to see his reaction to bookworm and quite sarcastic reader 😂

I think I've finally got something for this. Hopefully it's what you had in mind and you'll enjoy. 😅 To anyone else considering reading this: Yes, this fic is very meta. Hopefully it works though! (I'm torn over whether to put this one on AO3 😂 )

Title: Sarcastic Smiles

Fandom: Star-Crossed Myth

Pairing: Huedhaut/Reader (isekai'd into MC's body from our universe)

Main Characters: Huedhaut, Reader

Minor Characters: Ichthys, Teorus, Karno, Scorpio, Leon, Zyglavis

Rating: T

Genre: Isekai, um I dunno how else to tag this... rediscovering relationship?

Word Count: 2,961

Summary: You wake up one morning to find you are in a bedroom you thought only existed in your favourite otome game, only to find you are now inhibiting the character you have been controlling in said game. How will Huedhaut react to his Main Character no longer being the human he fell in love with, but still with knowledge of their relationship?

A/N : Spoilers for Huedhaut's path.

Sarcastic Smiles

Turning over in the bed with a groan, you blinked a few times as you blearily opened your eyes. This wasn’t your bedroom. It didn’t even look like the real world. Sitting up, you rubbed your eyes a little in an attempt to clear them. Whilst you had been playing your favourite otome game late the night before, this seemed far too real to just be a dream.

However, it was then that you realised whose bed you were in and you quickly stumbled to your feet, almost tripping over as you knelt down beside the pool in the middle of Huedhaut’s room. Looking into the water you froze. Swallowing hard, you tried to calm down as you reached up and brushed your hair back a little… or should that be the hair of the character you usually played in the game? Looking closer, you shook your head slightly. No, that wasn’t quite right - the features were shifting ever so slightly. This wasn’t just the main character of Star Crossed Myth’s features, it was also those of Clotho’s.

Well, you supposed that made a little sense considering which God’s bedroom you had woken up in. Wait… nothing about this makes any sense! You quickly snapped out of your investigation, instead pinching yourself hard. Nothing changed except now your arm hurt. You’d watched plenty of isekai anime so this phenomenon wasn’t entirely new to you, but if you ever imagined it was actually possible, let alone that it would happen to you of all people, well… “So this really isn’t a dream…”

“I should hope not. I rather hope if you were dreaming of my room, I would actually be here with you. Or do you find my room more interesting than myself?”

Your breath hitched. Even though the game only had a few voice acted stories, you immediately knew who was talking to you. Even if you had not recognised his voice or simply assumed that it was him due to this being his room, his wording laced with his usual sarcasm was more than enough. Speaking of which…

Smirking briefly to yourself, you turned round to face the God of Aquarius, before responding just as sarcastically, “Yes, I thought maybe I was dreaming of your room so I could look at all these books without you interrupting me.”

Huedhaut initially flinched, briefly making you wonder whether you’d pushed that too far, but then he knelt down beside you, looking into your eyes with a thoughtful look. “Trying to beat me at being sarcastic? You’re probably a million years too late for that,” he teased, smirking as he reached a hand out to brush your hair back.

As you were about to retort back to that, determined to get the upper hand on him for once now you could use your own words, you suddenly realised he had stopped short of touching your hair, his deep blue eyes wide with shock. “Hue?” You tried softly. Had the other noticed that you weren’t quite who he was used to?

“... Clotho? But… how…” he muttered, glancing down at the floor, clearly in distress. “Was that why you thought you were dreaming, do you remember what you did…” he muttered to himself.

You grimaced. Clearly it hadn’t just been the water showing you that you could be either of the game’s avatars because you were in Huedhaut’s route - it was because you hadn’t got full control over which you were outwardly showing. Now you had upset the other. You knew from the game that the other didn’t want Clotho back. He was in love with the Main Character and that was in the past. You frowned at that point, realising you didn’t know where exactly in the game’s timeline you had been deposited. However you then looked back at Huedhaut, swallowing hard as you watched a mixture of emotions actually go across his usually poker-faced expression for once. What had already happened didn’t matter right now, what you needed was to say something to reassure Huedhaut. “Hue, I’m not Clotho.”

Huedhaut looked sharply back up at that comment. He frowned as he looked at you once more. “... Well now you look more like yourself, but…” He sighed heavily. “Did Ichthys make you look like your previous self? If he did then he’s gone too far this time…”

It was almost tempting to pretend that that was what had happened, but you also knew that you probably still didn’t have a handle on who exactly you were presenting as to him. “No, it’s a bit more complicated than that…”

“If this is that Godforsaken’s King doing, I might -”

As a flash of anger flickered in the other’s eyes, you quickly leant forward and grabbed his hands in your own. “Hue. This is not related to the others. I…” where did you even start with explaining? “I’m not either of the women you think.”

Huedhaut let go of your hands and got to his feet. He looked at you with a frown. “If this is payback for all the teasing…”

Quickly, you stood up as well. “... This is not even my own world. From my point of view, you are just a character in a video game.”

The other looked at you, initially smirking as he went to retort to that, but then he seemed to realise that you were near tears. Quickly he moved back to your side. He sighed heavily. “You are being serious.”

“I’m sorry. I really don’t know how this happened… but know that I know you… please don’t tell me to leave…”

Huedhaut hesitantly wrapped his arms around you. “That is the last thing that I should do right now. You say that you are aware of this world, but the more people who see you like this, the more questions you will face. I need to find a way to fix this and get you home…”

“And get her back?” You muttered, your voice cracking a little.

“...” Huedhaut looked down.

“I do not think either will be possible… unless this is different to the shows I’ve watched in my world, being isekai’d is a one way process.”

The other didn’t respond to that, instead starting to look through his books at a rapid pace, reminding you of a certain special story when the main character had briefly ended up with powers.

That, however, gave you an idea. If you were controlling both the Main Character and Clotho then did that mean you could use them? About to raise your hand and try, Huedhaut suddenly looked sharply back at you. You stepped back a little at the gaze he was giving you.

“Maybe I should call one of the others after all,” he muttered, now regarding you suspiciously.

It was then that you noticed the book still in his hands appeared to be details of the under-realm. Well you could hardly blame him for being suspicious. “I’d never want to hurt you!” You snapped, your breathing a little strained. “Will you please hear me out some more?”

The other nodded and hesitantly sat down with you on the edge of the bed. It was at this point you felt overwhelming relief that it was Huedhaut’s main character you had changed into, with some of the others you’d either be in immediate severe trouble with or you’d never be able to explain this.

“So… according to you I am a character in a game?”

“Uh huh,” you responded, before taking a deep breath. You then motioned to the body you were now inhibiting with your hands. “And I… I mean she… um… I mean the human you are in love with was controlled by me.”

Huedhaut glanced away for a moment, seemingly still trying to take this all in. “If you were controlling her as you believe in your world would you not be able to form her responses better than this? Perhaps I would never have noticed…”

You shook your head, impulsively grabbing his hands. “But you already did notice, Hue,” you reminded him. “Because parts of the game exist where the human was Clotho, I’m not appearing as just one of the two to you. Besides…”

“Besides?” Huedhaut asked, finally looking back up at you.

“In the game the input was limited to one of three replies.” This time you averted your own gaze. “There… there is so much I would like to say to you.”

A stifling silence fell over the room after that. Just when you were starting to worry that perhaps you had pushed your explanation too far, you felt strong arms wrapping tightly around you accompanied by a loud sigh from your companion.

“You are always causing me so much trouble,” he muttered.

“Hue?”

He looked thoughtfully at you. “Do you remember everything about our time together?”

“I… that rather depends whether it was covered in the game or not,” you muttered awkwardly. “I haven’t actually pinpointed where exactly in the timeline we are right now.”

Huedhaut managed a tired and rather exasperated smile. “I suggest you look at your hand.”

Doing so, your breath hitched as you saw the ring from the fountain of love. “Oh. We’re already married…” you pulled a face.

“Is that a problem?”

“N-no,” you quickly reassured him. “At least, not from my end. It’s just… if we were before that…” you trailed off. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, Hue, this must be hard for you…”

The other actually seemed calmer now then when you had first started to explain. “Hard for me? From the sound of things you thought that this was a fictional world. That sounds far more alarming.”

“But… what now?”

Huedhaut frowned. “Now that is a good question. I feel like we need to try to get to know one another again before that can have a coherent answer. Even if you were the one sometimes inputting her answers, you still are not quite the person I fell in love with. Just asking you to tell me everything you remember right now though I think would be embarrassing and awkward for the both of us…” his expression changed into a smirk. “Unless you want to talk about yourself at length?”

“Hue!” You snapped.

Chuckling briefly, Huedhaut then sighed softly. He got back to his feet. “Before we do anything else I should probably see whether there’s a way to make sure you appear exactly as before to the other Gods. This might be a little over some of their heads. There’s no need to make things more complicated unless we absolutely have to.”

***

Later that day you were in the mansion living room with Huedhaut, the other having stabilised your outward appearance for now.

“Hey! Still here today, huh?” Ichthys asked happily, as he came into the living room.

“No, I have gone home,” You replied with a smirk.

Ichthys’ eyes widened momentarily, it initially not clicking, but then when he realised what you were doing he snapped out of it and instead frowned at Huedhaut. “Have you been giving her lessons in sarcasm? That was weird…”

“Yes, we have spent all day perfecting this just in case you turned up. That would be a great use of our time,” Huedhaut responded with a smirk of his own. He shared a glance with you.

“...” Ichthys grimaced and ran over to Teorus who had just returned from the Heavens. “Teo! Could we have a straight conversation please?”

Teorus looked over to you both. “Hue, are you winding Ikky up again?”

“When would I ever do that?” Huedhaut asked.

“... You’re in a good mood,” Karno muttered as he joined the commotion, feeling a little perplexed at the current state of things.

Huedhaut faltered at that point. He glanced down. “... Not quite…” he muttered to himself.

Reaching over, you squeezed his hand briefly, trying to remind him not to act in a way that the others might find suspicious but also trying to reassure him that things would somehow work out.

“What's all this damn commotion about?! Tch… I see, it's mostly you pain in the ass Wishes Gods here…”

“O ho? Do you have a problem, Scorpion?” Leon added as he headed into the living room just behind the Vice Minister of Punishments. “Judging by who is present, if there's any comotion I suspect that fish is to blame.”

Ichthys stepped back behind Teorus, his eyes wide. “I've not done anything! She and Hue are the ones acting strangely!”

“That's quite enough from all of you,” came a firm voice from the doorway.

Everything became eerily quiet and you tensed a little as you looked towards Zyglavis.

Huedhaut seemed to recognise that you were on edge now. He shifted closer to you on the sofa so that your shoulders were touching but not in a noticeable way to the others.

The Minister of Punishments glanced at you briefly but did not say a word. Instead he looked over to Leon who was shooting a glare and a scowl in his direction. “Is there a problem?”

“I won't have you telling me what to do, Minister Ponytail,” Leon snapped back. “Instead of telling all of us to be quiet as though you own the place, perhaps you should talk to your Vice Minister and that Prankster Fish!”

You shared a glance with Huedhaut as Zyglavis stormed over to Leon and the other nodded. Standing up you both went to leave the living room before things got any more chaotic.

“Going somewhere a little quieter? Can't say I blame you,” Karno murmured softly so the others didn't hear, having noticed you trying to slip away. He glanced at Huedhaut thoughtfully. “If I was wrong about you being in a good mood earlier… is everything alright? Nothing I should know about?”

“We're fine,” Huedhaut responded firmly before you could do so yourself.

“Well then, enjoy the rest of your evening. I suppose I best see whether I can placate Leo before we have a real problem on our hands.”

Huedhaut shared a sympathetic glance with the other before inclining his head in way of thanks. He led you away from the room a little, before snapping his fingers.

Appearing in the oddly familiar yet never seen in real life before apartment, you glanced around and took a deep breath before looking back at the other. “Why are we here?”

“I think that is more than enough of the other Gods for your first time here in person,” Huedhaut muttered. “We are much less likely to be disturbed here than if we stay anywhere in the mansion. Besides, I think that was enough data to tell that the spell I used is masking your appearance back to how it was for the others.”

You nodded and tried to relax. “Yes, if Zyglavis didn't notice I guess we won't have to worry about questions for a bit.”

Huedhaut pulled your sleeve gently and got you to sit down on the edge of the bed with him. He smiled softly at you. “Zyglavis turning up gave me more information than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You became extremely tense when seeing him. I suspect some of that is because you suspected he would be the most likely to see through the mask, and I believe you are correct in that assumption. However, to know that you would have to be familiar with all of us, and… well…”

“Hue?” You asked softly, taking his hands once more as the other averted his gaze.

He hesitantly looked back up after a few moments. “Forgive me. I fear there was a part of me that was still uncertain whether what you claimed happened to you was entirely factual, of if not that at least concern that your memory might not be there at all or even incorrect…” he sighed softly, forcing a tender smile at you as he held your hands tightly. “However, when you saw Zyglavis I knew in an instant that you knew how he'd tried to destroy you in the past. I know now that even if our memories are not quite the same, we can probably get back on the same page.”

You forced an uneasy smile at him. “Don't apologise, I'm sure today has been a lot, even for you.”

“Yes, it has,” Huedhaut agreed with a taunting smirk, his deep blue eyes glinting from the sunset visible from the balcony window. “So, what are you going to do to make it up to me?”

Taking a deep breath, you hesitated for a moment, worried that you could push things too far. However, remembering his admission that he genuinely believed everything you had said, you wrapped your arms around him before pulling him into a brief kiss.

When you parted, Huedhaut reached a hand up to your face and brushed your hair back. “Well, if that is how a short kiss from you feels, I rather hope you do indeed have knowledge of our relationship, otherwise it may become rather too intense down the line…”

You rolled your eyes at his familiar smirk, and smirked back yourself. “Really? I thought I was restraining myself…”

“!!!” Huedhaut's eyes widened briefly, then he averted his gaze, flushing bright red. “Comments like that are against the rules,” he grumbled, but then looked back up at you with a genuine, caring, smile. “As by your own admission you aren't who I was expecting, I cannot say that I love you, yet, but rediscovering each other and reminiscing over old memories may not be such a bad thing.” Wrapping his arms around you he hugged you tightly to him. “I just hope you can be patient with me.”

“However long it takes, Hue. I'm not going anywhere.”

#star crossed myth fanfic #scm fanfic #scm #star crossed myth #scm huedhaut #huedhaut x reader #huedhaut x reader (isekai'd as mc)#scm ichthys #scm teorus #scm karno #scm scorpio #scm leon #scm zyglavis

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kedreeva · 1 year

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Excuse me, may I ask what your tag "want for ts" means? I only know the shortening standing for team speak and I am always left in utter, but somewhat hilarious confusion because of this when stumbling over that tag.

Thank you and have a nice day.

So, I'll probably show my age here but my tagging system for my blog, which is a filing system for me, mostly, I created when I made my blog back in 2012. Back then, there was no native blacklist feature and I'm not even sure xkit had it yet, so people used an extension called "tumblr savior" that allowed you to blacklist tags. It was also considered hugely impolite to put negative things into the main tags of stuff, so if you wanted to tag something for someone to block, as opposed to tag something for someone to find, many people would tag "[thing] for ts" as in [thing] for tumblr savior (to block).

At some point people started tagging other stuff like "tw" for "trigger warning" (which was hell for me, because I was in teen wolf (tw) fandom at the time), and then "cw" came for a bit and I still see that sometimes, but i remember there being a scuffle about how to put it (eg, "cw X" or "cw: X" or "X cw" etc) because until "for ts" there was no clear order it should go in by syntax. Now tumblr has a native blacklist and idk what people are using to label their own stuff, but my filing system (again, the one I use mostly for me) never really left the "for ts" days. I still use it because if I wanted to look up, for instance, "blood" and find posts ABOUT blood, then I don't want to also slog through a bunch of posts I've tagged as a warning.

so, "wank for ts" is just my way of labeling something as "this is some bullshit, feel free to block it"

#asks #personal #also because of the way my brain works I WILL NOT remember an updated system #I barely remember to try to tag things that might be obvious warnings now

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pixiemage · 1 year

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(Originally an addon to this post about Ao3 not using an algorithm)

There are FOUR WAYS to get people to read your stories on Archive Of Our Own, and none of them include relying on a nonexistent algorithm to get them to interested parties.

Choose a good title! And yes, there is such a thing as a good title, though I'll admit it's rare for me to see a bad one. Even something as simple as "The one where Martyn forgets the milk" is enough to get me wondering what kind of story earned a title like that. Sometimes a song lyric works super well if it fits the vibe of your story, and sometimes coming up with something of your own might work better. Sometimes making a joke in the title draws more attention if you've written a story that will make people laugh, and sometimes choosing a one- or two-word phrase that catches the eye is all it takes. (If I see a fic called "Poppies, Princes, and Paranoia" I might just get curious enough to wonder what in the world is in that story.)

Write a summary! Please. Please, for the love of god, give your story a summary. Every time I come across a fic that says "haha I'm bad at summaries, just read the story lolz" my first instinct is to move on. By saying you're Bad At Summaries, you're also implying that you're bad at writing, and any potential reader won't take the time to click on your fic and give it a chance when it looks like the author isn't confident in their own work. You don't have to write a masterpiece in the summary section. You can say "Tim has a no good, very bad day. Luckily his partner is there to cheer him up." And look! Ta-da! Summary! :D It's short, sweet, and to the point, and it's miles better than saying you don't know how to write one. OR! OR, if you don't like that either, then you can literally take a short and interesting chunk from the story itself and drop it in the summary box. Look! You're doing great! ^^ You've given a taste of your writing, hinted at what's to come, and caught someone's eye. THAT will hook a potential reader far more than laughing about how "bad" you think you are at writing summaries in general. Self-depreciation may work for a social media post, but it doesn't work to sell your writing.

Clearly tag your work! I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but putting clear and relevant tags on your story will ALWAYS bring new readers to your story. Many people on Ao3 search specifically by tag to better narrow the massive sea of stories they'll need to choose from. So tag relevant ships and characters (preferably only the ones that are a primary focus in your fic), tag the proper fandoms, define if it's "hurt/comfort" or "angst" or "fluff" or "crack", and add the main plot concepts where needed. (For example, I'm writing an Amnesia AU, so I tagged it as both Amnesia and Temporary Amnesia, because while the amnesia is a lingering factor in the plot, it WILL NOT BE later, and some people are more likely to read if they KNOW the conflict in the plot will be resolved.) And while I understand not wanting to tag certain things for spoiler reasons (though you should add those once they're revealed in a chapter), I DO RECOMMEND tagging relevant warnings, as well as specifying whether the ending will be a GOOD one or a BAD one. Some readers are more or less likely to click on a story based on that alone. I've specifically taken a chance on a sad-sounding story before because the author said it would end happily, and more often than not I wasn't disappointed! I wouldn't have read a sad story otherwise! Tag that shit!***

JUST KEEP WRITING! People will stick around for a good story! It's true that quality of writing will make a good fic stand apart from a great one, and that comes down to skill. That's not to say people won't read a story that's written by a less skilled author, because if you tag and title and summarize your story well, you'll still draw in readers, and most people will stick around to enjoy an interesting story whether it's 2k works or 20k. But the more you write (and the more you READ), the more you'll learn and the more you'll improve. Don't give up just because you're getting less attention than the next writer. If you keep working on your craft, you'll be right up there with them soon enough. I'm in my late 20's and it took me years to get to where I am. I'm not foolish enough to pretend I don't know I'm a quality writer, but I also refuse to call it "talent" because it's much more than that. It's a skill that I honed over years of writing and storytelling. I learned from my peers and I took inspiration from bigger and better writers to work my way up to where I am now. So don't write just to get hits and kudos, write to tell a good story! And when the comments come in, though they may start small, just know that those people are seeing the passion you're putting into your work...and they're just a small taste of the kind of joy you'll be able to share if you stick with your writing. <3

(BONUS: Share your fics on Tumblr and other sites. If you're worried that they won't get seen on Ao3 without help, then feel free to boost awareness by dropping a link and some info elsewhere. I do this every time I post something new, because I know that part of my audience lives on Tumblr! So don't hesitate to utilize the platforms you've got. Tag it properly on here and you'll get a few more reads from folks who are looking for it!)

***Please remember, too, that "Dead Dove, Do Not Eat" is not a replacement for any bad tags. What it actually means is "What's inside is what's labeled on the tin" ...or to put it bluntly: "Please for the love of god, read what I have in the tags, there's probably some uncomfy crap in here, so READ THE LABELS. You have been warned." If you don't add the tags you're Dead Dove-ing, then the Dead Dove tag is pointless and tells your audience nothing. Be kind and be clear. Your readers will thank you for it.

#Writing #Writing Advice #Archive Of Our Own #Ao3 #Fanfiction

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crystallizsch · 3 months

Text

masterlists: [ art / tags / ocs ]

credits: [ used game assets from @alchemivich for dividers/deco on my posts! ] [ banner by @midnightmah07 ♡ ]

[ main: @scint1llat3 ] reblogs galore with different fandoms including twst (not spoiler-free) + i also follow and sometimes interact from here :3

━━━━━━✦

[ intro post tl;dr ] (bc i ramble too much lmao)

you can call me "ian" or "crystal"!

i am 18+ (but everyone is still free to interact!)

twst-only blog (with a bias for jamil viper at the moment help me)

usually art + oc x canon content + occasional shitposts/rambles

i think it should also be important to note that sometimes the majority of my thoughts are in the tags hgsdfnds

not spoiler-free for EN content; JP content will be tagged with #twst jp & #twst jp spoilers

tagging me and spam is fine! love em :0

asks open for everyone and anything (w/ anon available)!

(slightly more detailed/rambly version below!) ━━━━━━✦

welcome ~ ♡

for the people finding themselves here uhhh-

hi! you can refer to me as ian or i don't mind crystal -from my user- if it's easier to remember!

twisted wonderland has been haunting my every waking moment so that's gonna be this entire blog ;;;

i do mostly art (forgive the style inconsistency from one post to another i'm experimenting hfjskdljs), i sometimes do writing???, and generally i just post whatever comes to mind.

also a lot of oc x canon stuff and the occasional shitposts and rambles. (fair warning i do a lot of long posts with comics hndnfsn)

i also ramble a lot in the tags which is usually where 90% of my thoughts are ;;;

and despite being a majority jamil viper content at the moment(bc brainrot for him is real rn), i do in fact still have a love for the rest of the twst game --

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i am 18+ but nothing here will be too mature/nsfw; (if there would be anything that i think would be too crude/sensitive/suggestive, i will put a warning!)

just please be aware that if you are under 18 that my posts will reflect the fact that i am 18+

this blog is not spoiler-free for already released EN content; i will only tag spoilers for JP content with #twst jp and #twst jp spoilers so please filter those out if you do not want to see those posts!

i am mainly based on EN because that's what i play but i also catch up with JP stuff; so my knowledge and preferences about twst are very mix-and-match.

━━━━━━✦

tagging me and spam is absolutely fine :0

i love seeing the interactions, y’all are fun. even you silent lurkers, likers, and rebloggers. i tend to be the same so you are all hella appreciated too 💖

and irdc what you do with reblogs, go ham and have fun you lovelies.

also i read all tags and replies even if i don't respond to all of them. i appreciate them all, thank you 😭😭💕💕

also also when i do plan on responding i can be incredibly slow sometimes so pls forgive me on that 🙏

━━━━━━✦

ask box ~ ☆

always open! and feel free to send about anything! (anon is always available if you prefer!)

i welcome thoughts, questions, etc and i'm always looking to chat or just gush about twst! (i'm also okay with things that aren't twst-related like just silly random asks :3)

on that note, i'm also down for requests / ideas! canon stuff, oc ramblings / interactions, oc x canon, etc. are always fun!

no specific rules at the moment because i'm not sure what to expect yet;;; but everyone has been generally cool! AND!!! if i haven't gotten to your ask yet don't worry i have! i just tend to be very slow (and indecisive) ;;;

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[ hopefully you enjoy looking around !!! ]

#last major edit: 04/24/24 #*editing for the umpteenth time because of formatting and wording*#also hi im just vibing and yelling into the void 🧍

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onepawproductions · 5 months

Note

please dont put ai art in main fandom tags thank you.

Hi, I'm not sure which post or fandom you're referencing? Also not sure what you mean. I don't put random art generated by an Ai on here. I use Ai tools as part of my process to help bring what's in my head to the screen. I have a disability that severely limits the use of my hands, and Ai tools have given me back my ability to create art again. It's been such a blessing to my life, honestly. It was so depressing to spend my entire childhood learning to draw and paint and sculpt, then go to school for it, only to have EDS/MCAS/Epilepsy/detached retinas (amoung other stuff. It sucks, I know) smack me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper in my mid-twenties.

I know there's a lot of misconception about Ai Art right now. What is is, what it isn't. Like those one-shot gens pushed out by people using highly modified ai generators, putting out massive amounts of art that looks super pro but without soul. That's not what I'm doing, but I can totally understand the mixup! What I do doesn't come from a website where a descriptive sentence will give you jaw- dropping art. It's more similar to digital artists using Adobe Photoshop, and is a very involved process requiring days and sometimes weeks of work, several hours a day.

I tried for awhile tho include more about the process, so people can see how hard it is, but this doesn't seem to be the right forum for that. I think Tumblr is maybe more of a "show me the finished stuff" thing? I could be wrong, tho, for sure.

Or, am I miss-tagging? I know a lot of my art is not just fanart, but fanfic fanart. Is that it? I do wanna get my tags right... Hmm

Let me know! Since you posted anonymously, I'm not sure if you'll get a notification of my reply. Go ahead and PM me, if you like. I think I have the PMs open. :)

Meanwhile I'll tag this to the fandoms I'm tryna make inroads with. Maybe someone there will know!

Oh, right. Here are some examples:

A Harry Potter chapter heading for the fanfiction audiobook Im recording, shown here mid-process. I can see it in my danged ole head, but its over a week in and still struggling. I had to even uninstall/reinstall my entire system when it went belly up due to a bad extension, yargh. The scene is chapter 17 of The Muddy Princess, by Colubrina.

These are a culmination of about a month of work trying to hone in on Taylor Heberts face. I picture her as an amalgamation of about three different awesome women I've known in my life...plus Claudia Black! I think they're pretty good, but not 100%. I'm still trying to find the right place to post my art and discuss with people, but tumblr seems to be not the place for that sort of thing.

But anyway. Yeah. Where should I sort these so the people who wanna see em can see? Am I getting it right?

#fanfic #dramione #draco x hermione #taylor hebert #worm #worm fanart #parahumans

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nabtime · 9 months

Text

Our Empty Graves XII

Fandom: Danny Phantom / Batman: Under the Red Hood

Pairings: Danny Fenton/Jason Todd (Dead on Main)

Rating: Mature

Tags: batfamily, hazmat AU, Nobody Knows AU, Mute!Phantom, potential ghost king danny, slow burn?, DC means Disregard Canon, AU means AU nothing is exactly the same, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, more than canon typical violence, danny is a Halfa and also a Fetch, no beta we die like basically everyone

Summary: They say that Red Hood has a loyal mutt. The man rules his territory in Crime Alley with an iron fist and a guard dog at his side. They say that Hood calls him Fetch, sometimes Fetcher. No one's ever heard him speak. Anyone who's ever seen him says he looks like an experiment gone wrong, that Hood picked him up somewhere unspeakable. They say he'll do anything Red Hood asks of him and he'll do it well. That he's strong and fast and probably inhuman. The girls say he's sweet; quiet but charming in his own way. Rival gangs say he's vicious; that he'd sooner rip your throat out than let you go.

Jason just wants to help him.

Chapter 12: with my eyes wide open im dreaming (darling do I deserve such a break?)

Chapter Summary: Recovery, cooking lessons, and an odd dream.

Chapter Notes: title from With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming by Patti Page Links: AO3 // Chapter 1 // Chapter 11 // Chapter 13 // Spotify

They got back from Doctor Leslie’s clinic after she’d kicked them out in the early hours of the morning. Danny couldn’t really tell you which day or how long they’d been in her clinic, but he could tell you it was early. Too damn early for anything, let alone traversing the back-streets of Gotham and hoping no one tried to jump them while Red’s hands were tied. He carefully directed Danny down the streets and made sure he didn’t get lost as they made their way to one of Red’s safe-houses. From what he was able to tell it looked like the same one he’d first been brought to, the one he was most familiar with. The one that looked the most lived in.

They both collapsed on the couch and didn’t move for a long while, neither of them dropping off to sleep like they should have- just trying to process everything.

Danny chose to stare at the ceiling, the colors of everything around him seemed so bright- no matter how often he’d had his tinted visor off lately, it was still something he wasn’t used to. He’d... existed, for so long, with everything in shadows and bathed in a sheen of darkness. His face felt naked and vulnerable to the world.

He didn’t want to put it back on, though. Which was a new and terrifying feeling.

He chose to ignore it and bask in the silence of the apartment, the only sounds being the hum of the appliances and the distant hustle of the city. There was a surprising lack of screaming and sirens that usually plagued Gotham, probably from the ungodly early hour. Even the terror of Gotham had to sleep sometimes- the rogues and the bats all tucked away all nice in bed while the normies went about their day.

What a wild place he’d landed in.

He hoped that explosion hadn’t hurt anyone else. He’d been far too distracted by making sure Red made it out okay that he didn’t even think to look for any other casualties. Although, he was pretty certain no one else liked to hang around the carnival themed area of the docks so the likelihood of any others getting caught in the blast was low. But not zero. Whatever the case, it was too late now- the cleanup and aftermath having long since passed. Whatever bodies there may or may not have been weren’t something he could help with now. It wasn’t something he particularly want to think about either. (There seemed to be quite a few things that he didn’t want to think about.)

He thought, instead, about what to do with Red’s hands. As a ghost, Danny had some semblance of accelerated healing. So, theoretically, since Hood was also ghost-adjacent, he could have accelerated healing too. Maybe Danny could jump-start the process? Figure out a way to blast his hands with enough regenerative ectoplasm that it fixed them all shiny and new instead of making them radioactive? He also needed to take care of that poison pooling in the other’s chest. He didn’t like it. He’d never encountered ectoplasm that was so rancid before. Usually you could tell the intent of the stuff by the smell or the taste- some instinctual sense ghosts had to tell one type of goo from another. The stuff Hood had felt like nothing but pure malice. It had no other purpose but to hurt.

It was close enough to ectoplasm to bring the other back to life (if that’s even what did it in the first place) and give Red some ghostly attributes (like purring!) so it stood to reason that pure or at least regenerative ecto would fix it. But would flushing his system with it work? Would it eradicate the poisoned ecto or would that have to be removed first for it all to work? Would anything even happen at all? Would any of it help or would trying to do any of that just kill him all the way? Red had been alive with the bad-goo for this long without much consequence, who’s to say it even needed to be removed at all?

Danny didn’t know. Danny didn’t even have the slightest clue. He wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t an expert. All he had were questions and shoddy speculations. Nothing he could test. Nothing he would dare mention to Red in case it went horribly, horribly wrong.

It would be fine as it was for now. Probably. Hood would just have to deal with his hands healing at a normal human rate, no matter how long and terrible that was.

They sat for a good while longer. Danny in a slowly growing panic and Red nearly dropping off to sleep right there on the couch a few times.

Then the awkwardness began. The first hurdle they’d have to jump while Danny cared for the other during recovery.

Red pulled himself from the couch with a prolonged groan- movement slow and likely agonizing. He didn’t move further, just shuffled from foot to foot in discomfort and looked into the distance with the most despondent look he’d ever seen on the other man’s face. Danny sat up and studied him, waiting for a cue to guess where he could help.

“I have to go,” Red whispered, voice wrecked from his sore throat and the pure helplessness in his tone.

They had a silent stand off. Hood glared at his hands, then Danny, then the bathroom door just down the hall before he circled back to his hands. He didn’t appreciate Danny’s silent huff of laughter at the action.

Danny rolled his eyes and held up a hand, holding up one finger and then two and tilting his head in question.

Red sighed. “One,” he said tersely.

Danny shrugged a bit, hauling himself up from the couch. Then he stepped closer, looking up into Red’s widening baby-blues with a smirk. Gently, he undid the tie to Red’s sweatpants and loosened them, then stepped back. He waved toward the bathroom and then mimed shimmying pants down using his elbows and then sitting, trusting Hood would get the message without him having to spell it out.

Red squinted at him before the light-bulb seemed to go off. “Fucking genius,” he muttered before speed-walking for the bathroom- happy he could do that by himself at least.

(How he got his pants back on without Danny’s help was a bit of a mystery, but none of the bandages had been disturbed so he let it go.)

Red Hood was a stubborn man. Danny already knew this, but trying to take care of him and make sure he didn’t use his hands only made it clearer. Hood was a stubborn bastard dead set on self-sabotaging his recovery.

He refused help wherever he thought he could get away with it and tried to sneak in doing tasks that he knew he couldn’t do on his own anyway. Danny had caught him multiple times trying to do things he shouldn’t- like attempting to get plastic over the wrappings on his hands in order to do dishes when Danny wasn’t looking. Kudos to him for thinking to protect the wrappings from getting wet, but he was still in trouble because he was putting undue pressure on his broken hands. Danny had also caught the man trying to put on his Hood Helmet™ and crawl out the window! He’d had a very stern “talk” with him after that- Danny threatened to take Red’s hands off himself if he tried that again.

It was all incredibly awkward at first. There were quite a few things you couldn’t do on your own if you didn’t have hands- not if you weren’t used to it- not without tools. And Danny had to be there to help him with all of it. He didn’t mind it- not really. It was a little odd with how intimate it felt, but he liked taking care of Red. That protective part of his core hummed with satisfaction at being able to keep Red healthy and safe. He was also perfectly happy to let Red have as much independence he could manage without using his hands- if he could use his elbows or feet or whatever other appendage or makeshift tool for the task then Danny would let him. He was surprisingly resourceful so long as Danny made sure he wasn’t trying to push himself past his limits.

Their second big hurdle came with dinner.

Danny caught him trying to fumble with cooking utensils in the kitchen. He knew his cooking wasn’t that great, but come on! It wasn’t that bad! None of his food reanimated and he took that as a win.

“Ghoul boy,” Hood said after Danny had thrown a tantrum and pushed him into one of the rickety kitchen chairs and glared at him with his hands on his hips on accusation, “I’m tired of take-out. It’s been two weeks. And I don’t trust you to cook on your own after what happened with the bagels last Wednesday.”

Danny silently scoffed and threw a careless hand to the side. So I’d burned a few bagels. So, what?

Red glared. “You destroyed my toaster and nearly set the apartment on fire. The toaster isn’t even supposed to get that hot, let alone burst into flames that can’t be put out by a regular fire extinguisher. We had to toss it out the window and hope for the best! I don’t even know how you did that!”

Okay, so, maybe it was a bit worse than burning the bagels. But still! He could do something simpler! He huffed and threw his hands in the air. I could pour cereal without setting it on fire! Probably!

“You absolutely would find a way to set cereal on fire and you know it, Spooks,” Red retorted, irritated but also vaguely amused.

Danny deflated a bit before flopping into the other rickety old kitchen chair, scratching dejectedly at the sleek dark wood of the itty-bitty table the chairs surrounded. It sat in a small corner of the kitchen and was what counted for a dining room in the small apartment.

The apartment itself was small and cozy- it felt a little lived in- even if it was still pretty barren. The kitchen was well stocked with utensils and appliances (fancy ones that Danny definitely never wanted to touch for fear of either breaking them or them breaking him), if not always stocked well with ingredients. There were extra blankets and pillows for the second-hand couch- all in bland colors and made of cheap material. It screamed of a temporary place, something put together with minimal thought and expense- always meant to be a safe-house instead of a home. Not to mention the cache of weapons and tools that took up the entirety of the guest room. And the industrial strength first-aid kit supplies stocked in with them. He’d only glimpsed the room once, Hood showing him briefly when he’d apologized about not having any extra space. Danny’d shrugged- he slept in a tree most times, he could stand the couch.

Red interrupted his wandering thoughts with a question he didn’t particularly want to think about. “How’d you manage to be so bad at cooking in the first place? You eat, even as a ghost, so have you just been foraging around the forest all this time, like some undead squirrel?”

Danny huffed some semblance of a laugh before sighing. The question had an answer, there was absolutely a reason he was so bad in the kitchen, but did he want to share it? Show such a sad piece of himself to Red Hood? He stared down at the table as he tapped a slow rhythm on the wood. He couldn’t feel it under his fingertips, even without his gloves on. He debated for a bit before pulling the marker and whiteboard from his chest. He hesitated, fiddling with the cap and making no move to write.

There was a soft hum from Red and he looked up to see the other staring at the ceiling with a frown on his face.

“I’ve always liked cooking,” he said, voice soft and distant. “Even when I was bad at it, even when I didn’t know what I was doing, and even when I was only doing it because if I didn’t then I wouldn’t be fed.”

Danny felt his core let loose a small mourning croon before he could stop himself, the sound not unlike a dove’s churr. He quickly slapped his hands over his mouth (like that was even where the sound had come from) and tried hard to fight off a blush.

Red let out a short laugh at him, his eyes focused on Danny now instead of some long-away point in his past. Red’s grin slipped, though, as he continued.

“Growing up in Crime Alley is tough. Even tougher with a shitty dad and a mom that couldn’t control her drug use. She tried her best, but her good moments- where she was coherent and cared- were few and far between,” he said before smiling a bit. “The neighbors would step in, sometimes, if I bugged them enough. If they were friendly enough. Learned a lot of different recipes that way, too. All kinds of folk can end up down here, on the ground floor of Gotham.”

He sighed. “Really had to learn to fend for myself when I was inevitably orphaned.”

Danny didn’t like the way he said that. Like it had only been a matter of time before he was left to the mercy of the streets. Like it was the expected outcome. Like it was an everyday occurrence. Or- like he had deserved it. Like the circumstances had been his fault. He crooned again, lifting up from his chair and reaching out.

He placed a hand over Red’s forearm, wanting desperately to hold his hand instead, but trying to give comfort where he could anyway. Hood laughed softly at his efforts and smiled at him.

“I wasn’t orphaned for long, Spooks,” he said, using his wrist to pat at Danny’s hand to let him know it was okay. “I got picked up eventually.” And then his face twisted into a grimace, a complicated series of emotions flashing across his face before he shook his head to clear it. “B wasn’t ever allowed in the kitchen, but Alfred taught me all kinds of tricks and tips and dishes to make. I miss it sometimes, honestly.”

Danny floated closer, lifting fully out of his chair to lean against Hood’s side, offering silent support. He didn’t ask, not wanting to bring up bad memories and knowing full well how painful it could be to think back on the good times before you died. Most times it was worse than thinking about the bad times; because you knew it would never be the same. That you could never, ever, go back to those times. Death, even temporary as it had been for both of them, was a force of finality. A curtain closing around your life as you knew it. Dying changed you.

Red smiled and leaned down to press his forehead to the top of Danny’s head where the foggy wisps of his hair licked at Hood’s shoulder. Danny just nuzzled him further before pulling back and picking up the board again. He wouldn’t share everything, but he could share a little. Just like Red had. He tapped the board for a bit before deciding on what to write, appreciating the quiet patience of the other beside him as he waited.

My dad was really bad at cooking- unless it was fudge. And my mom wasn’t too bad at it, but she’d get distracted a lot and end up burning things. And then she and dad would hole up in the lab most days anyway. It didn’t help that they would store specimen samples in the fridge next to the food either. My older sister tried her best, but she was too young for most of the big appliances at first and no one was around to teach either of us most of the time.

He decided to leave it at that. He didn’t want to go into the times the food came back to life. Didn’t want to think about how many thanksgivings and holidays had been ruined from the turkey reanimating and besieging the house or the cookies going up in flames and almost burning everything to the ground. Didn’t want to think about all the times Jazz had burned herself trying to keep them fed with something decent or how often she’d had to beat the blender into submission with the Fenton Creep Stick. He couldn’t look at a toaster without shuddering- probably why Red’s had combusted like that, actually- not after one had tried to eat him alive when he was five.

Red nudged Danny’s arm with his elbow, offering a silent comfort just like Danny had done for him. He also didn’t ask further, letting the knowledge sit between the both of them. Red hadn’t had a good childhood and Danny hadn’t had a particularly stellar one either. It’d taken time and perspective for him to come to that conclusion- about how his parents hadn’t been as good as they probably should have been. And that wasn’t even to mention what happened after the accident.

He caught Red looking thoughtfully down at the main jumpsuit of the hazmat he still wore, and heard the soft murmur of, “A lab, huh?” before Red sighed and slumped over the back of his chair. His huge muscley bulk made it creak ominously.

“Alright,” Hood declared, pushing himself up from the table and attempting to put his hands on his hips before thinking better of it. “Cooking lessons it is, then.”

What? Danny stood fully and moved to stand in front of Red while drawing a frantic question mark in the air. How the hell did he expect to do this without hands?!

Red shrugged. “I’m going to tell you what to do and you’re going to do it. Carefully and with strict supervision. And you might want to go ahead and grab the fire-extinguisher.”

Danny stared. This was not going to end well.

Oh well, it wasn’t his kitchen at risk here. He did grab the extinguisher, though.

“Open up the fridge and the cabinets, Jellyfish. I gotta see what we’re working with here.”

Danny did so, floating a little bit in order to reach the top shelves and ignoring Hood’s soft snicker at the action. Damn tall people. He stood back and watched as Hood went around, muttering to himself as he compared different ingredients- what little they had- and only occasionally asking Danny to pick something up and check its expiration date.

“The andouille’s still good, we have rice, and the spices are all in date- even if they’re not fresh,” he heard Red murmur as he paced around the small space in the kitchen, Danny now floating over the table to keep out of his way. “No aromatics, though. Didn’t have a reason to keep fresh produce. Miracle at all that I even had sausage and broth.”

He paced back towards one of the cabinets, lifting a hand before pulling it back when Danny made a move to lunge and stop him. He grumbled before using an elbow to shift the cans around himself.

“Tomatoes,” he said, nudging a can to the front and picking it up between his elbows to place on the counter, “so creole style.”

Danny would forever be impressed with how much Red had learned to improvise in the two weeks without his hands so far. The man had been put out at first but he was quickly learning everything he could and couldn’t do and what he could manage in more- creative ways.

The table was already littered with several ingredients, ready to be put to use once Red was finally done obsessing over having everything they needed. Oil, sausage, a bag of long grain rice, a box of chicken broth, a bottle of hot sauce and another of worcestershire, and several different spices and seasonings. One was labeled Cajun, so he assumed they were cooking something spicy.

“Fetch!” Hood barked, causing Danny to startle out of his floating and almost fall- barely catching himself before he hit the table. He looked up to see Red grinning at him and stuck his tongue out in retaliation.

“Grab my phone for me, would ya?” Hood asked before turning back around and assessing the bare cabinets yet again.

It had become a pretty common thing between them, Hood trusting Danny with his phone to text and help make calls. It was the only way Hood was allowed to still run his criminal empire- from a distance, and in turn Danny was trusted with the passcode and access to everything. Red had a surprising amount of numbers saved in there- always a person for something or another. Just as many numbers for Grannies around the Alley as there were for the gang members in his crew. Danny knew Hood was trying to build a community- trying to make things better in every way, but it was still astounding to see.

He’d called Nadi early on that way too. Yes, Hood had had to do the talking and Nadi had chewed him out real good before busting down the door to the apartment to make sure Danny was okay, but he hadn’t wanted to let her worry. She’d taken Red by the ear and chewed him out some more after fussing over Danny- telling Hood that the only reason she wasn’t tearing him a new asshole was because he’d already done that himself. He’d been surprised that Red had been willing to let her see him without his helmet- he’d still slapped a mask on but still. And even more surprised that he’d let her know the address to the apartment. It spoke a lot of the trust he had in both Danny and Nadi. He was in a particularly vulnerable spot with his injuries- yet he’d let them in.

He grabbed the phone from corner of the living room that had a tiny little table next to an open outlet with a charger plugged in. Hood had multiple phones- most of them burners- but this one was the main one so it got it’s own special little place. He popped it off the charger and skipped back into the kitchen, unlocking it and holding it up for Red to see.

He nodded and said distractedly, “Call Mama Pourciau for me, please? I’m hoping she has some of the ingredients we’re missing.”

Danny did as told, scrolling through the frankly huge list of contacts until he got to Mama Pourciau and clicked the call icon. He put it on speaker and held it close to Hood so he could talk comfortably. He wondered idly what they’d be making.

Well, he wasn’t about to find out through the phone call because Red was not speaking English while talking with Mama Pourciau. If he had to guess, he’d say French- but it also sounded different to any French he’d heard before. He’d have to ask later what language it was.

He zoned out while watching Red talk, his voice nice as it wrapped around words he’d never heard before- the accent of them pleasing in a way Danny never thought he’d have a thing for. And then the call ended on Mama P’s end and Hood was smirking at him over the dial tone.

He shook his head and gave Hood a sheepish look, floating back over to the living room to put the phone away in order to avoid the teasing light in his eyes.

“She’s going to be bringing a few ingredients by, so keep an ear out for the door. She didn’t have everything but it’ll do in a pinch,” he said and then paused and hummed thoughtfully. “Go find those blankets that Mrs. Almeida dropped off the other day, too. Mama Pourciau’s daughter had a baby a few months ago and those should do as payment.”

Danny grinned and gave a jaunty salute before hopping away to hunt down the downy-soft blankets Mrs. Almeida had knitted and brought over for them in thanks for paying her son’s bail last week. Joao had done nothing wrong and Mrs. Almeida had been beside herself when the GCPD had tackled him and taken him in. Danny himself had gone down to the precinct and haunted the shit out of them in retribution.

Most people in the Alley seemed to work within a complex network of barter and trade, working with each other to cover each other’s needs. At least, now that Hood was making sure there weren’t any trouble-makers to disrupt it they were. And he kept the cops away from things that weren’t their business. Before the Alley had seemed to be a free-for-all. An every-man-for-himself type of place full of cruelty and despair. Now, slowly, it was building into a community. Something beautiful.

When Mama Pourciau knocked on the door, Danny answered with a grin and an armful of brightly-colored blankets. The older woman-stout and dark skin lined with age- had cooed and kissed his cheeks and traded burdens with ease. She hadn’t flinched at all at the sight of his fangs when he smiled. Hadn’t even hesitated to hug his colder body, her warm one smelling like coco butter and spices. She just patted him on the cheek and told him he was a sweet boy with her pretty accent and then told him to tell Red Hood that she’d be happy to send him recipes any time.

He nodded, awed at her response to his monstrous nature and waved with his hands full of groceries as she left. He felt dazed as he made his way back into the kitchen.

Red laughed at the look on his face when he came back. “Komik,” he said softly, shaking his head before gesturing for Danny to put the bags on the table to join the other ingredients.

“Cooking one oh one,” he started. “Fancy cooking, at least, starts by making your mise en place.”

Danny stared blankly and waited for Hood to explain what that was. He didn’t know any French, thanks. He’d barely learned any Spanish in high school before he’d had to drop out. Thankfully, Red knew full well he was an idiot already.

“You gather everything you need, measure it all out, and have it handy for when you’re ready to put it all together,” he continued without any judgment in his tone. “So lets see what Mama P was able to scrounge up and put it all together.”

Danny pulled everything out one by one, Hood naming each ingredient as he did so. Onions, green and red bell peppers, celery, garlic, dried oregano and thyme, okra, and even a small amount of shrimp.

“Ooh,” he said when Danny’d pulled out the shrimp. “I’m gonna have to get that woman something more than blankets for that. Didn’t ask her for any shrimp, sneaky minx.”

Danny had spluttered at the phrase, almost dropping the shrimp in the process. Who the hell called a sweet old lady like Mama Pourciau a minx?

Red laughed at Danny’s fumbling but then mumbled, “Don’t tell her I said that.”

Danny rolled his eyes before miming closing a zipper over his mouth.

“Alright,” Hood said, stepping over to the cabinets and drawers and pulling one open with his elbow. “Time to slice, dice, and measure.”

Danny pulled all the tools they would need per Hood’s instructions, making sure to follow along and pay attention. He was determined not to set anything on fire this time. Right now, thankfully, they weren’t working with heat yet, just chopping and putting everything together. Pulling out things like a Dutch oven and setting it aside. Measuring cups of rice and broth and using little spoons for the spices that were then put in little cups. It was fascinating. It was… nice.

Danny didn’t know cooking could be like this. Slow and methodical and soothing. There was no yelling here- no shouting about sentient hot dogs or being careful with the stove that he was too small to use. There was no uncertainty here- no guessing and guessing wrong about the basics and ending up with inedible accidents or stinging burns. Just him, Hood’s low, patient voice, and the food slowly coming together under his hands.

Partway through, Red had them stop and look for the small radio he kept in one of the upper cabinets, wanting to listen to something while they cooked. He had Danny flip though several different stations before landing on one that played music you might be more likely to hear play from a gramophone- soft and brassy and old. He’d wanted to question it, but watching Red’s eyes close in contentment and his hips gently sway made him pause. Maybe another time. He almost nicked himself with the knife watching those hips.

“We’re going to use the stove now, jellyfish,” Hood said softly as he nudged Danny with one of those distracting hips. “You ready for that?”

He shrugged. Maybe another time he’d be nervous, certain something would catch fire, but with Red showing him what to do and how, he felt pretty confident he wouldn’t mess up so badly this time. He bumped his own hip against Red’s and moved all the things they’d be sauteing next to the stove as the other told him to.

He browned the andouille, no problem, and then spooned it out for later. He poured in the onion, bell pepper, and celery, smiling as he stirred and relished in the delicious smell. Cooking had never smelled so good before- not when he was the one at the helm like this. It was something he could get used to if it went this well each time. It felt far more relaxing than he’d ever thought it could. He was used to the kitchen being a war-zone, full of screaming and fighting and chaos. This was nothing like that here now; just the soft sizzle of the food, gentle strains of old slow jazz, and the low murmur of Red’s instructions.

Hood hummed, pressing close behind him- chest to back, and hooked his chin on Danny’s shoulder. He was surprised at just how comfortable it all was. He leaned back into the embrace, just a bit, and felt his core rumble with a contented purr. Hood huffed a small laugh, but Danny could feel the echoing purr from the other’s chest against his back. Red had them both slowly swaying to the music and Danny had never felt so- warm was the only way to describe it- in his life.

“Garlic now,” Red said into his ear, “just for a little bit. Half a minute about. Till you can smell it good.”

Danny shivered and dutifully poured it in. The aroma in the kitchen was already heavenly, but it just continued to get better and better the longer they cooked. He could see why Hood liked this so much now. Eventually all the ingredients aside from the shrimp were added into the pot- Dutch oven- and all that was left was to wait while it simmered for awhile before adding them in.

It was peaceful and beautiful and if he could bottle the moment up he would. Just the smell of spices cooking on the stove and the rocking dance with Red to soft strings and trumpets. He didn’t deserve such a good moment. Something so painfully human and full of life. He didn’t deserve something so dreadfully gentle. But he wouldn’t tear himself away for the world. Maybe it was selfish of him, but he couldn’t bare to let it any of it go.

And in the end, well, they’d managed to make a pretty damn good jambalaya. Even Red said so.

═════ ◈ ═════

It wasn’t often that Danny dreamed. It wasn’t often that he slept in the first place, his ghostly nature allowing him to go for days without rest, and to dream within those handful of moments was rare. Nightmares, yes, they plagued him almost every time he couldn’t avoid dropping off to sleep any longer.

Dreams were different, though. Softer.

It should have been a nightmare, with what he was witnessing, but everything was distant and fuzzy around the edges. Like he was completely detached from the scene (the memory) he’d found himself watching from a completely different point of view. This wasn’t his memory, but it was of him, of something that often came back to haunt him.

He watched, in remote fascination, as his own clawed hand plunged into Pariah Dark’s prone chest and ripped out his core.

He’d been told by the other ghosts right before the battle, and in no uncertain terms, that taking the Tyrant King’s core was the only way to stop him. That without the original Council of Ancients to seal him away, putting him back in the Sarcophagus would do nothing. The only way for him to be defeated was to End him. And they’d all been fairly confident that Danny was the only one capable of doing it.

And hadn’t that been something? Every ghost that had ever kicked his ass had told him that he was the only one. The only one strong enough to defeat an Ancient King that had ruled over the Realms for thousands of years, that had previously only been defeated by being locked away by a group of powerful Ancients.

And he, an eighteen year old half-breed that they’d previously fought to hell and back, was their only hope.

He ran, at first. Scared out of his mind and fully believing that all his enemies were simply trying to get him to fully kill himself and act as canon fodder against Pariah to buy them all more time. Yes, he’d gotten stronger. Exponentially, every year. Especially after he abandoned the last shreds of his humanity and dedicated his full focus to developing his powers and fighting skills. He had no allies. Only four years of getting the snot beat out of him and a worryingly long list of powers that grew by the week. That wasn’t enough to kill a King. Not alone. Not by himself.

They’d found him and pulled him back, telling him his only choices were to either face the menace or be Ended himself. He hadn’t seen much choice there. They’d reluctantly laid out a plan to help him. They knew all their afterlives were at stake should he fail, but yet no one else stepped forward to do the job themselves.

The weight on his shoulders- his duty as a protector- had always been heavy. Especially when he’d just started out, when all he’d been was a scrappy fourteen year old just trying to survive. Just trying to protect the family that continually left him cold. Trying to protect the town that grew to hate him more and more. And when the GIW had invaded, it grew to protect other ghosts as well. It hadn’t been very hard, with the GIW being as incompetent as they were, but he still hadn’t wanted to see what would happen if they caught anyone. And it wasn’t like protecting the ghosts that hurt him had changed the status quo- he was far too used to saving those that would rather kill him than accept his help. But he gave it anyway.

And now they were forcing him. Telling him that despite all the animosity they’d treated him with, he was their only hope for survival. That he had to put what was left of his life at stake for them.

And he’d been so angry at first. Wanting to rage and scream and not being able to emit a single sound from within his suit. Because how dare they? How dare they pin this all on his shoulders? How dare they demand he save them after everything they’d put him through? After every fight, every taunt, every stab in the back.

And then Vlad, the idiot fruitloop that had started it all, had pulled the Fright Knight’s sword from the ground and transported the entirety of Amity Park into the Infinite Realms.

The people at the edges of his parent’s ghost shield had died. Humans couldn’t survive the Realms for long, and they could survive even less without protective measures like the shield. Not to mention however many casualties had happened when the ground itself had been rent apart with the transition.

And then the bastard had had the gall to tell Danny it was all his fault. That it was Danny’s cowardice that had killed them. Danny’s childishness that had caused everything to fall apart. He’d stood there, all smug and demeaning, pointing the sword at Danny’s chest as he placed the blame on someone else- completely disregarding how his own antics of tracking down the Ring of Rage for his own gain had been the reason Pariah was set loose in the first place. The Ring he still boasted on his finger.

It had never been more satisfying than that moment to punch the ass in his fanged blue face- the safety-goggles Vlad’d died in crunching under his fist.

The man liked to lord his superiority over everyone he came across, but especially Danny. Liked to claim that because he was the first of their kind, the first of the Halfas, and because he had years of experience and knowledge over Danny that he was better, and stronger, and smarter in every way and would always be so. That unless Danny gave in and became his student (his son), he would always, always be just a rash and ignorant boy. He liked to pretend, though, that it was also only a matter of time until Danny gave in. He used the fact that they were the same to twist the knife deeper and deeper. Insinuating that Danny’s path to becoming like him was an inevitability (and he refused to think about that).

But he was wrong; they weren’t the same. They were both Halfas, yes, but that wasn’t all they were. Danny was a Fetch, the ghost of a person still living. The true balance between life and death, a being both alive and dead in an even split. Vlad was a Draugr, a vengeful ghost with a corporeal body. There was still a part of Vlad that was living, however small, which classified him as a Halfa and allowed him to age the way a human would. But he was more ghost than human, even clutching to the last dregs of life within him as he was- claiming in vain he was human. Danny, on the other hand, had given up his life, denying that any part of him was still human despite the truth. Vlad was made from spite and slowly rotting flesh; Danny was made from tragedy and pure ectoplasm.

Danny had grabbed the sword from the cursing man and cut the hand that bore the Ring clean off in one vicious swipe. He’d never been so violent, never taken it that far before. And it had both felt exhilarating and terrifying. He’d shut down all feeling after that, grabbing the Ring for himself and leaving Vlad to scream and wallow in his deserved agony. They’d been lucky enough as it was that Pariah hadn’t taken the Ring from Vlad before that. With it, the King might have truly been unstoppable.

It’d been with the help of his enemies taking on the army, the Ring of Rage enhancing his Wail beyond measure, and the Sword of Nightmares slicing anything in his way, that he’d been able to fell the monster. He’d pinned Pariah to the ground with the Sword and used the enhanced strength of the Ring to dig into his chest.

(The Ring refused to leave his finger, stuck there- and forever making it impossible for him to speak without unleashing a world-ending wail. It stayed invisible most times, but he could feel it. Always.)

He watched, now, dispassionately, as a younger version of himself clutched Pariah’s core within his ectoplasm covered claws.

This was a dream, not a nightmare. He knew the difference well.

A figure appeared to his left, shrouded in a purple cloak and dark shadows, nothing of their face to be seen but deep red glow of their eyes- similar to the eye-shine of a predator in the dark. He knew the figure, but he couldn’t quite place from where. It was a memory on the edge of his mind, but he didn’t struggle too hard to grasp it. This was still just a dream.

The figure said nothing for a time, the both of them just continuing to watch the wretched memory play out. They watched Danny crush the core to dust, watched Pariah’s body melt horrifically slowly as he screamed, watched as Danny pulled the Sword from the King’s body and plunged it back into the ground. Watched as he fell to his knees in despair when nothing happened- when Amity remained trapped forever in the Realms.

“Why this?” he asked of the figure, wanting to look away, but unable.

“A warning,” the other said, voice smooth and even with the softest curl of a lisp at the edges. “A reminder.”

“Of what?” he asked, knowing he wasn’t likely to get an answer. Because that’s how all of this bullshit ever worked. Never any answers, never any real help.

“All will be revealed in time,” the other said, pulling a staff from the depths of their cloak and tapping it on the grass beneath their feet.

And then Danny woke up, disoriented and head fuzzy with sleep, the dream slipping from his mind the longer he tried to think of it, until it was nothing but a disquieting echo.

#naps fics #dp x dc #Our Empty Graves #dpxdc

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