#well i have a bunch of dc fics to catch up on. might as well do that!

[fractualized]

Alright. Let's break down this "oh" of an ending. NEGATIVE NANCY, COMING THROUGH

Spoilers, ho!

Ending a story is hard, if they're long or short. Whether you wrap up key threads or leave them open, you want some kind of takeaway that puts a period on things. Even in comics, where we know these characters will go on and on, ideally a story will end in a way that just... fits. Even amateur fic writers have loads of WIPs just sitting there because exactly how to end this damn thing eludes them.

I don't know if Rosenberg had an ending in mind when he started The Man Who Stopped Laughing. I don't know if he decided he'd figure it out by the end of it's year-long run. I don't know if DC Editorial lets people do that; it sounds insane, but if you've been paying attention to their current level of editorial "oversight," which I imagine is supposed to make concurrent titles mesh together reasonably well, I wouldn't be shocked if they let people wing it. Or, more likely, perhaps DC Editorial swooped in and made Rosenberg change the ending he had planned and that's why the result falls flat.

In any case, after 11 issues of enjoying myself, I'm left feeling deflated.

But let's start where #12 does, with the Joker who's been told he's John Keyser, a toxin'd henchmen that the real Joker made into a doppelganger for funsies. He approaches a hotdog vendor.

I'm stuck on "Hello. I've been looking for you"?? I didn't catch that on my first read. Joker has a favorite hotdog vendor? lol

Shut up, Waffles!! All we have is your word for it!!

In any case, hey, Keyser Joker has already been Jokering this long, so yeah, why not keep going? And why not with help from poor woobie Jason, fresh from nearly getting himself killed in Gotham War?

Bruce did not fix Jason at the end of Gotham War, so his adrenaline is still triggering fear in his brain. But Keyser Joker has a solution for that!

It's a tiny dose of Joker toxin to take the edge off of Bruce's programming. Joker makes a point of saying that the effects are only temporary, though. (And like, I assume this is just the quick-fix solution Rosenberg came up with to pull off his own ending when told Bruce's plans for Jason over in the other titles.) Jason is skeptical of this "help," naturally, but Keyser Joker brings up their matching interest: getting rid of the other Joker.

Jason, why you gotta ruin Albert's good time? 🙄

Cut to Red Hood dragging a clown henchman through the streets of Gotham.

But "his" face being blacked out and some of the dialogue clue the reader in: things aren't what they seem.

DERAIL TIME: what is up with this batmobile?

Like from some other angles, it looks sportier, but in most of the panels it looks like an old Buick? lol ANYWAY.

With the flaily way this person jumps off the bike and runs, I was sure that this was Keyser Joker and we might see Batman interact with him. Alas.

It's Ravager, who survived last issue's explosion. She's helping Jason 1) distract Batman and 2) get Albert out of harm's way, far from Keyser Joker's plan.

Naturally Keyser Joker is planning something more destructive than he's led Jason to believe. Also like…

The idea that Keyser Joker really is this John guy, not the real deal, is still not sitting fucking right with me. Seeing him here in another costume, with a goofy death train with mismatched eyes just like his, it feels like a signal that he actually is Joker and Waffles is either lying or mistaken somehow. Like compared to the other Joker, who we haven't seen in a costume? Who left Gotham for weird reasons? I really thought there was going to be a reverse reveal.

And since it doesn't come, I guess it's a good time to mention that! There is no reverse reveal of who the real Joker is. Things get a little muddy later, but…. hrm. HRM.

That said, the other Joker does something pretty dang Jokery: he shows up in a dirigible with his face on it.

Killer Moth and a bunch of clown goons (that aren't supposed to be available because of Gotham War but WHATEVER) attach the dirigible to the train and it's pretty chaotic!

I love when villains are like, "Look I may kill people, but an endangered gorilla?! Get outta here!" 😂

Jason also arrives in style.

I guess he was observing Ravager's distraction?? Which feels like it defeats part of the purpose of having her do the distraction. But then he couldn't have this cool entrance in which he bludgeons people with a motorcycle. Trade offs!

Meanwhile, Real Joker makes it to the front of the train to confront Keyser Joker. One of Real's goons offers to shoot Keyser, but Real Joker wants to make this personal and kills the poor hench so he can do it himself.

Jason coming in like YEEEEEAAAAHHHHH 😎

Then he gets the bad news.

Keyser is as casually suicidal as your average Joker! Also "Real" Joker never acknowledges Red Hood's identity, afaik. It's always Keyser Joker. Details like this got me thinking that reverse reveal was coming, AND YET.

That aside, next comes a fun comedy beat.

Real Joker going right for the hair!

Jason isn't going to let this be the end of it, of course, and once again Killer Moth must suffer at his hands.

Jason shoots so many clowns. Just never the one he wants. 😞

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaait wait wait. You're telling me that Bruce knew about the imminent TWO JOKERS situation. But he decided to prioritize a report of Red Hood dragging a clown through the streets. When in the same breath he's saying there are other people coming to the scene with him, so he obviously could've sent someone else? On the same day Batman #139 is like "oooh Bruce is totally onto Joker now"? This is what you're telling me?? Augh.

Well, we can't rely on Batman right now, clearly, so it's up to Jason.

Meanwhile, Keyser Joker has told the other one that he actually does have a secret way off the runaway train safely. After they fight some more, the tune starts to change.

Alright so, this "deal," which would sort of start them back at square one, doesn't bother me because obviously it's on shaky-ass ground and one of them is definitely killing the other before this issue is over. What does bug me is the "franchising" line, for two reasons:

1) Is this supposed to imply that Real Joker is the one who was behind Joker Incorporated in the Batman Incorporated issues, not a third one?

2) I was just SO SURE it was another indication we were getting a reverse reveal. Joker absolutely does not love the franchising idea. That's kind of been the point of this whole series. The genuine Joker in Keyser Joker's hallucination/memory said that having two Jokers around is stupid. HRRRRMMM.

Anyhow, they leave the train together, though the escape plan is literally just jumping off, which has more issues than they bargained for.

So do you think, assuming the Gotham War writers actually communicated at least a little, that Zdarsky asked Rosenberg what he needed Jason for at the end of TMWSL, and Rosenberg was like, "oh I need him to heroically crash a toxic blimp and almost die?" And then Zdarsky was like, "er, I need him to heroically fly a plane into a magic meteor and almost die?" And then they just shrugged and closed the Zoom?

But yeah, the blimp crashes, and I'm sort of confused because I thought that earlier Bruce was saying that even if the toxin gets into the water, it'll still make it's way to the city. So for one thing, it's still exploding in the air and it's still gonna drift. And the parts that dissolve in water are still gonna drift. There's a part to the equation missing here.

But these two are just thrilled at the excitement.

Until the sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

BUT WHO WAS JOKE

Shortly after this, Ravager shows up with Manhunter, who also survived last issue's explosion. (It just doesn't come up at all. Like it doesn't have to, I guess, but it's just weird that there's not a word or wound about it.) Ravager dives into the water looking for Jason, because she instinctually knows he did something grand and dumb. She finds him among the clown bodies and brings him to shore.

Nothing can kill this man! He came back from the dead with nine lives! And also maybe that Lazarus resin from TFZ is still helping, I dunno.

Elsewhere along the shore, what's left of both Jokers' crews find themselves waiting in the same spot for the Joker they expect to be triumphant.

You know what. I'm soured on Waffles now. Leave him.

And then, from the water…

And that's it. That's how it ends. With a sort of snide cop-out?

Like, it's Joker's POV, so yeah, you could say the dickish tone is just him. But following this story for a year, and then seeing it end with simply the old "you'll never know which Joker prevailed," it doesn't feel clever or whatever this is going for. It just feels obnoxious.

Honestly, it feels like the same takeaway as freaking Three Jokers. 😐 That it doesn't matter who Joker is. All the lead-up to this, where maybe we get a tiny bit of depth and development, even if just in this story, eh. Doesn't matter! We're ending this with blah payoff.

On the other hand, the part of about about there being more questions, about this ending not being tidy, makes me think that this is leaving open the possibility that Keyser Joker actually was the real one. After all, we don't get a flashback to the actual events. The events we see are part of a hallucination, and Keyser never said he had clear memories of being the real or the fake one. He just went from assuming he was the real one to taking Waffles' word for it that he was the henchman.

Also, Keyser Joker was always the Joker giving narration. And the narration boxes for the Final Joker at the end remain in his style. So it seems like we actually have a huge indication of which Joker prevailed-- unless we're meant to assume that if the other Joker prevailed, he merely took over the narration.

I mean, this is what we have. So if I can just choose what I want to believe, I'm going to believe both that Keyser was actually the real guy and that he won. But it puts a real sour taste in my mouth to be super engaged with a story and wanting an ending that says something about Joker's character… and the ending is just that one murders the other and you don't know who, neener neener. It's anticlimactic. It's a predictable direction that I thought SURELY Rosenberg wouldn't go in. It feels like a dick move.

And... what else is there to say? So ends my year of consistently buying a comic, I guess. Nothing else has really grabbed me like TMWSL did, though City of Madness looks promising. After the multiverse and Gotham War stuff, I'm not about to start picking up Zdarsky's Batman. #139 had plenty I should enjoy, but it's soured by Zdarsky deciding to bring a canonical take to the three Jokers concept for some ungodly reason.

A new three Jokers take feels extra stupid after a year of a story about two Jokers. And the second Joker in TMWSL isn't even taken into account in Zdarsky's story. Based off that #135 scene, it really looks like he's going to say that Darwin Halliday accidentally copied TKJ Joker somehow. lmao Why. Why do we have to do this. Why can't this just be one of the things that gets retconned away. I just want my murderclown to be fun.

I need to get back to my list of unread older comics. Or read One Operation Joker! I didn't think I was interested, but I think a random goofy premise is actually just what I need.

#the man who stopped laughing #joker #spoilers #my jibber-jabber #sorry for being a downer

[stealingyourbones]

Hi, I don't know if you'd even answer this ask but I've been loving all your prompts and been sucked into the dp/dc crossover content.

Im curious about trying to make some oneshots or fics myself but I'm not well versed in dc at all except very basic knowledge so I'm really nervous.

Do you have any advise for how to start or suggestions to help some one jump right in?

Ok I'm gonna be using this slightly as an excuse to give y'all a DC reading guide and also:

Personal Opinion 1: You really don't have to read any comics to learn DC. I'd highly recommend going on Youtube and watching some summarizing History of the Batfamily videos so you know the general lore. Reading a bunch of solely DC-related fics also helps greatly. It can get you immersed in the world and learn tidbits of backstory and characterization without having to touch a single comic. if you feel confident enough that you know the character? Go for it!! If you're still unsure and you want to write it anyways? Have a beta reader who's well versed in DC help point out moments that may be OOC or help fix characterization a bit. You never know how good you are at writing that character until you put your pen to paper! Personal opinion 2: go to your local library, go to the graphic novel section, and see if any comics catch your eye. Pick it up and give it a read. There truly isn’t a perfect place to jump in for comics. Continuity is all Willy Nilly and confusing. There’s no perfect spot to jump in but there are personal recommendations or preferences that people will tell you to start on.

I highly recommend listening to podcasts about characters that you’re intrigued with to see if you want to spend the time researching and reading about said characters.

Other tertiary opinion.

I really only have Batman comic recommendations but a friend of mine gave me a list in order for Batman comics to read so here it is:

Batman Year One.

Batman Venom.

Batman Long Halloween.

Batman Dark Victory.

Robin Year One.

Batgirl Year One.

Nightwing Year One.

Batman Cult

Batman Death In The Family

Knightfall

Batman No Man’s Land

Under the Red Hood

Batman Zero Year

That’s what I got. You don’t have to read every single comic to know everything but at least reading a summary of the comic so you’re caught up and not confused as you go into the next comic is something I’d recommend. Batman Knightfall and No Man’s Land are super long and really a drag to read through. Like genuinely they’re painful as hell to read through. I’d recommend reading a synopsis online or listen to a podcast about it.

Other comics in general I’d recommend that I've read that I think are good depictions of the characters:

Superman: Up In The Sky. by Tom King.

John Constantine Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits. #41-46. by Garth Ennis & Will Simpson.

The Spectre by John Austrander.

Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil. by Jeff Smith.

Blue And Gold. by Dan Jurgens

Victor & Nora: A Gotham Love Story. by Lauren Myracle

Batman Vol 1 & 2 (The Court of Owls & The City of Owls). By Scott Snyder.

Again, there are definitely some better comics out there and a lot of comic runs I didn't add on. That's simply because I haven't read the others. Some of these characters you might not care for, and that's completely fine! You don't have to read them then.

Podcasts I'd reccomend:

Character Corner. Their takes and reviews are wonderful. I adore this podcast and found out about many amazing comic runs from this show.

Geek History Lesson. It has a gimmick and it's fun. It's not as in-depth as Character Corner but it does have a far larger array of Characters to listen to and learn about. There's also is this ao3 post that has a batshit insane amount of info on how to navigate and learn about Batman and Gotham

#bones replies #dc comics #reading list #bones masterpost

[eirian-houpe]

TMI Tuesday

Yesterday I managed to write something for the first time in ages. It felt good, even though it was only just shy of 1000 words on Still Waters, the next fic in the Lover’s Leap series. I’m going for day two today, and with less things on my ‘to do’ list...

See, here’s the thing.  As well as depression and anxiety, and all, I have ADHD.  Yes, they often go together, right?  Well, I’m only supposed to make a ‘to do’ list with three things on it, otherwise I get overwhelmed.  Trouble is, if I don’t put something on the list when I think about it - I forget... and that just causes a whole bunch of other issues!  Damned if I do, damned if I don’t LOL

Yesterday I also re-read both of my Halt and Catch Fire fics. Why?  Well the 30 Days of Fanfic Challenge had a question about pairings, and it came up, and suddenly I wanted to read them again.  Now I want to rewatch HaCF, maybe see if I can finish those fics.

Anyway, here I am, and I’m chugging along.

Please feel free to ask about Lover’s Leap, Halt and Catch Fire, or any of my other fics

Here are some suggestions for you.

Ask suggestions

Ask something about any of my fics (full list is below the cut). If you want specifics from some fics that are already outlined, you can ask about:

All Our Past Mistakes, Chapters 11 through 44 Lover’s Leap Series, Stories 15 through 31 Time’s Curse, Chapters 6 through 10 Laer o Faen, Chapter 27 & 28 Stargate: Atlantis, Harms Way or any of the 20 fics in the series.

Ask something of any of my characters in general or you can get really specific if you like - for example you might want to ask Gold from Pawn Shop a question about a chapter, a thought, a feeling… (the world is your oyster really)

Ask about my process as a writer, what makes me tick,, or even ask about me personally. Almost nothing is off limits.

Also, if you want to see a specific character or fic featured in Three Things Thursday, or Saturday Secret, feel free to send in prompts, if no one does, then either the choice will be random or they just won’t happen at all. I made an analogy for why that might be in a different post about a car stuck in the mud with spinning wheels. Those wheels are still spinning!

Please remember: if you read a fic you enjoyed on AO3 or on Tumblr (not just mine), please take the time to comment and/or leave kudos, and to reach out on TMI Tuesday. It means a lot to the writers and artists.

You can find all my fics currently on AO3 here, and there is a full list under this cut.

Storybrooke’s Best Kept Secret - Rumbelle

Darkness In Hyperion Heights - Woven Beauty au

Seven Tastes - Rumbelle

Tuesday - Rushbelle AU

The Language of Flowers Series - Rumbelle

Disparate Pathways - Rumbelle AU

Scattered - Rumbelle AU

All Our Past Mistakes - Rumbelle AU

What the Actual Fuck! - Sutherelle

Breathe - Rushbelle

The Lover’s Leap Series - Rumbelle

Awakening - Rumbelle

War Is Coming To Storybrooke - Rumbelle

Given No Choice - Rush

Thoughts On A Happy Ending Series - Rumbelle

Darker Hearts Series - Wish!Rumbelle

Modern Wonders - a OUAT/Alice crossover

Time’s Curse - Rumbelle

The Pawn Shop On Main Street - Rumbelle

The Mansion On the Edge of Town - Rumbelle with a side of Jefferson

Cobra: In Your Prayers - Cobra/FatWS/UC:Undercover et al

To See Series - Rumbelle

Nobody Knew (Bingo) - Rumbelle

Secret of the Seas - Rumbelle AU

Butterfly and Phoenix - ST:DSC

Laer o Faen - Tolkien

Ship’s Rats - ST: DCS

I Amar Boe Men Heb - Tolkien

Coming Down - Halt and Catch Fire

Armor of Ice - Halt and Catch Fire

Duath i-Achas Eriol - Tolkien

Balance of Terror - Sleeper Cell

What To Believe - UC: Undercover

If: In The End - UC Undercover

Precious - The Mummy Series

Forbidden - The Mummy Series

Power Is - The Mummy Series

Angel of the Heart - The Mummy Series

Star of the Morning - The Mummy Series

Not Yours To Keep - Foundation (TV)

No Saving Throw - Stranger Things

ILP (or IEP) for Rumple.

“Only Remembered For What We Have Done.”

Here are fics that haven’t yet been started, but are in the Muse’s bucket.

The Miner’s Day Festival - Rumbelle

Aftermath - Rumbelle (with a side of madness)

Saving The Dark One (WT) A twist on a twist of Rumplestiltskin.

Brought To You By The Color… (Red)

Calcul(us)

(In)consistent equation

The Boston Storybrooke Line

Breaking the Waves (Movie AU)

One Last Wish

In Service to My Son

Playground Games

Bright Eyed and Bushy Tailed

Librarian: UC

Exquisite Harmonies

Resolutions - Rushbelle in the Deck the Halls universe.

No - absolutely not - I will not write a sequel to this fic!

#TMI Tuesday #asks #send asks #send me asks #ask me anything #ama #feel free to prompt me #Lover's Leap #halt and catch fire

[danny-chase]

wait selina had her own protege? Tell me more 🥺

[Image ID: A young girl (maybe like 13-15) with hazel (yellowish) eyes and short brown hair. She's wearing a lot of eye makeup, a little hat with cat ears, and goggles. She wears a tie, pink vest, and grey t-shirt with pawprints. End ID]

Batman (1940) #642

Kitrina Falcone - link to wiki

She was a Catwoman copy cat (haha sorry i couldn't help it) who grew up with her abusive uncle (Mario Falcone - he literally tries to kill her in the arc she's in, she calls him uncle - but others claim she's his little sister and she claims she's Carmine's daughter) and lived on the streets for a while. She looked up to Catwoman and imitated her, but Selina steals some of her maps (i think like blueprints for heists or smth idk) so she breaks in to Selina's house to steal them back.

At this point she was working for Penguin (she bombed a place it was a whole thing) - her map making skills are vital for taking down/locating Black Mask so she's vital (she's doing this for the bounty). And she and Selina get on and Selina gives her a costume and she becomes Catgirl.

[Image ID: Selina Kyle as Catwoman and Kitrina Falcone as Catgirl stand on a rooftop next to each other with the moon illuminating them. The Catgirl costume has a studded silver belt and collar, black claw-like gloves, black leggings, and a black tank. There are pink zagging stripes on the side of the torso and back of her calf that have silver behind them. She also wears pink ankle high converse with a purple cat icon patch on the side. She has a mini cowl with cat ears that are pink on the inside and pink scale-like bracelets/ruffles at the end of her gloves. Narration boxes (Dick): Or in this case, in the reflection I catch out of the corner of my eye - the swift and agile movement in the reflection of the windows across the street. Selina: He's gone, Catgirl. Kitrina: I want to follow him. I bet he has a cool hideout. Selina: No. You have much to learn... and lesson one starts tonight. End ID]

Batman (1940) #697

Idk if she has any appearances as Catgirl, but following her appearances listed in the wiki she lives with Selina for a while until Dick tries to talk her into going to boarding school (with Selina also on board) on orders from Bruce.

[Image ID: Dick and Kitrina argue on a rooftop, Dick as Batman and Kitrina in a white tank top and pink pajama pants. Narration box: I don't have much time to spare on a night like tonight. But Bruce wants Kitrina Falcone out of Gotham. I can't say I disagree. Dick: The Aldridge Boarding School for girls is one of the best in the country, Kitrina. It's everything you need. Kitrina: And nothing I want. Dick: You can't have what you want. I'm taking that away from you. Kitrina Why are you acting like such a dork? I've proven myself. I helped you. Are you forgetting all the - Dick: You're young enough... smart enough to have a normal life. And you're an opportunist... take the one I'm giving yo - Kitrina: No one gives me anything. I take. I have everything I need here. Support. Training. Selina (off panel): Listen to him, Kitrina. End ID]

Batman (1940) #710

Dick lecturing a kid about not being a child vigilante is just jdfklajdkfla hypocrite XD

Anyways from here on, she runs ahead on the case they're working on (i skimmed didn't actually read it) leaving him clues and such it's like the typical young vigilante storyline of being over confident. She gets in over her head, Dick catches up and bails her out - she runs (because this one actually has self preservation instincts unlike the 934758 other batfam characters). Dick gets shot in the head (again - but don't worry the cowl redistributed its impact *sigh* this man has so much head trauma, but comic book logic) by Harvey Dent's wife Gilda no less and wakes up later and finds this letter.

[Image ID: Dick looks down at a paper, bandages are wrapped around his forehead. He's drawn with blocky features there art style isn't doing him any favors. Dick: A letter from Kitrina Flacone. The note reads: Dear Batman, I am writing to keep you from worrying about what became of me. I wouldn't want you to think that "Catgirl" got in over her head. Or was kidnapped, or killed. They show the side of a travelling bus. Note: I'm leaving voluntarily. In fact, I'm going to try out that school you signed me up for. It's probably a dumb idea... but I'm a girl who likes challenges. Kitrina sits looking into the window, seeing her reflection as Catgirl, earbuds in her ears. Note: And putting up with a bunch of rich prissy debutantes will be a challenge. I'm sure I'll put a few of them on their rears by the time it's over. But the point I'm making is, don't count me out. I'll be back. And I will be bad-assed. - Sincerely, K End ID]

Batman (1940) #712

The arc itself is pretty dry and follows a pattern we've already seen from DC comics. Also she's like "I'll be back" and DC just went sike. So. Yeah. Reboot messed her stuff up. It's annoying to me that they made Lian Selina's new protégé or whatever when they already had this storyline right here, and to have Jade drop her off like that is ooc, especially because Roy was right there as well. And while Kitrina might not be for everyone personality wise, I personally would love to see her kick rich kids asses at boarding school. Or just have her train under Selina - because at the least she already grew up watching Selina and trying to emulate her, both in personality and in the skills she taught herself - so the connection for this character is already there - whereas "Shoes" just came out of nowhere.

Another thing I find kind of funny is the popularity of "Stray" fics, because she hits some of the same beats I've heard about (i haven't read any though this is second hand knowledge). To my understanding, when someone (Tim or Jason) is stray, they grow up on the streets trying to escape familial abuse (which she does) and eventually is taken in by Catwoman (which she is) and becomes her protégé (again which canonically happened to this character). Though she doesn't interact with her respective Robin (Damian at the time) too much which i think is also usually a part of said fics.

Anyways here's her being called a stray lakdfjaslfdj

[Image ID: Kitrina as Catgirl slams into a car, Riddler's daughter following after her. Riddler's daughter: I need to warn you. I hate cats. Kitrina is kicked through the cars windshield. Riddler's daughter: Especially strays. Kitrina: Oofh! End ID]

Batman (1940) #711

I have no idea if this is a coincidence or not - this character has very few appearances, which date back to the Dick!Bats era - so i assume most of this fandom doesn't actually know who she is, but it's possible one of the first "Stray" fics used her as inspiration.

Also she freaking bit Dick as Batman which i find hilarious - i know fandom makes a big thing about Damian being a biter but like:

[Image ID: Kitrina bites someone's gloved forearm - it's Dick as Batman but you can't tell from the panel, forcing him to drop a knife. There's a chomp sound effect. Kitrina: What're ya? Crazy?! You're not killing him! Dick: Umff!]

Batman (1940) #696

*CHOMP*

#I also found a panel of Steph biting the Black Mask during War Games and i was like yes get him!!! #thanks for the ask i'm sorry this was so gosh darn long lmao #Kitrina falcone #stray #i wouldn't go looking for stray stuff apparently theres a lot of j*y/t*m which is why i avoid it #and allow the more dedicated individuals wade through the trash and tell me about it #either which way i'm literally so angry they chose to do a stupid ass plot with Lian instead of just bringing her back #like dc please read your own comic book canon and then we can talk #asks #batfam #little known batfam members #batfamily #catwoman #catgirl #dc comics #selina kyle

[gingersnapwolves]

The Untamed, a brief summary [Part 2/6]

Part One: Sword Wizard School

Part Two: The Search for the Yin Iron and the World’s Worst Summer Camp

Ext, Somewhere

Lan Wangji is looking for the yin iron. Wei Wuxian catches up with him and makes some bondage jokes. Lan Wangji is clearly warming up to him, as he doesn’t punt him into the stratosphere.

Jiang Cheng, still incensed that his brother snuck off, goes to look for him. Jiang Yanli packs him a sack lunch and tells him to be careful.

Wen Qing is stuck with Wen Chao, following Lan Wangji, and looks like she wants to throw herself off a mountain.

Ext, Tanzhou [Yiling]

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian run into Nie Huaisang, who apparently decided not to go home after school, presumably due to his grades. Yiling is nowhere near Qinghe. When Nie Huaisang decides to fuck around and find out, he goes for it.

In Tanzhou, there is a magic florist. She has a piece of yin iron, but they’re too late. Wen Chao has already taken it. I will forget that this happened in 90% of my fanfics.

Ext, Dafan Mountain [Yiling]

The three of them end up at a creepy village. There’s a woman mumbling something about a statue. Everyone else is missing except one creepy dude at a shrine to said statue, whose purpose is to give exposition. For some reason they decide to sleep in the weird cave with the creepy statue outside the abandoned village. Kids, amirite?

Ext, Somewhere

Jiang Cheng runs into Wen Qing. She purposefully picks a fight with him and he looks like someone kicked his puppy. But oh ho! It was just a ruse so she could tell him that his brother is in trouble at Dafan Mountain without anyone overhearing. He thanks her and takes off.

Interior, A Creepy Cave [Yiling]

The statue comes alive and attacks them! It keeps going for Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian makes a joke about it having a crush on him. They seal it to keep it from moving.

Outside, a mob of villagers who look the same as the not-a-corpse guy attack them. Nie Huaisang posits that he would like to be excluded from this narrative, of which he never asked to be a part. Wen Qing shows up and uses a magic flute to subdue the mob. She will never use this flute again despite countless times doing so might come in handy. Jiang Cheng turns up too but is too busy roasting Wei Wuxian for running off to do anything useful. Wen Qing tells Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian that the mob is powered by a shard of yin iron that Wen Chao has in his ‘dire owl’ which is a bird made out of shadow that could not possibly look less like an owl.

Wei Wuxian uses a nifty golden net spell that he will never use again despite countless times it might come in handy to protect the others while he and Lan Wangji fight Wen Chao and kill the absolutely-not-an-owl. The villagers are released from the spell.

Wen Qing tells them that this is where she and Wen Ning grew up. The statue had a piece of yin iron in it, and when Wen Ruohan came and took it, the statue went berserk and killed a bunch of people, including her parents. It also stole part of Wen Ning’s soul and that’s why he’s weak and sick. Then she goes back to Nightless City despite that this is clearly a terrible idea, because Wen Ning is there. Jiang Cheng asks her to stay, but she won’t, and Jiang Cheng is sad. Somehow nobody thinks to point out that she’s serving the man who got her parents killed.

Ext, Yueyang [Qinghe]

Somehow they’re all the way up towards Qinghe now. Please don’t ask questions about travel times. It’s my worst nightmare in my fics.

Nie Huaisang says that Meng Yao is meeting them here. Why? Who knows. My best guess is that Nie Huaisang knows he’s going to be in Big Trouble for sneaking off and thinks Meng Yao can protect him.

They stop at an inn. The waiter tells them something weird happened at the Chang house and now nobody’s there but they hear noise every night. The yin iron starts clamoring to be let out of its pouch and gives Lan Wangji heartburn.

Ext, the Chang manor [Qinghe]

Xue Yang has killed every damn person. It’s fucked up.

ENTER SUPERMAN and BATMAN, like seriously, imagine you were in a DC Comic and those two just dropped in for cameos and nobody bothered to explain who they were because they figured you would already know. Their names are Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, and by the time they show up again, you will have forgotten that.

They’ve been tracking Xue Yang for All the Crimes and want to arrest him. There’s a fight. Xue Yang loses and enjoys it way too much.

Wei Wuxian asks him questions about the yin iron. He acts like a little punk. He doesn’t have any yin iron on him even though he obviously used it for Carnage, and they can’t find it anywhere.

Meng Yao and Nie Huaisang show up. They agree to take Xue Yang back to The Unclean Realm to be tried for All the Crimes.

Xue Yang cheekily says, “Don’t forget me!” to Xiao Xingchen, who immediately forgets him.

Exeunt Superman and Batman, while Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian both stare after them longingly, clearly wishing that they too could hunt monsters and criminals instead of dealing with political bullshit.

Ext, The Unclean Realm [Qinghe]

Meng Yao shows them in and tells Nie Huaisang that the Wen sect has demanded each sect send an ‘inner heir disciple’ for ‘indoctrination’. Nie Huaisang remembers that he’s the only inner heir disciple sect in the Nie sect and panics. Meng Yao laughs at his histrionics. To be fair, they are indeed funny.

ENTER THE WORLD’S MOST BADASS MUSTACHE

This is Nie Mingjue. He is the head of the Qinghe Nie sect. He carries an enormous sword and has the title ‘Red Blade Master’. Every molecule of this man exudes big dick energy.

Nie Mingjue decides to immediately execute Xue Yang. Meng Yao steps in and counsels that maybe execution shouldn’t be their go-to, being rather permanent and all. Xue Yang can give them information and they shouldn’t waste their chance to get it. Nie Mingjue agrees. The others admire the fact that Meng Yao is clever and persuasive, and Wei Wuxian makes a comment about how Meng Yao’s biological father (the head of the Lanling Jin) is an idiot for not realizing he could make use of such a talent.

Nie Mingjue orders Xue Yang put in prison and the guard strengthened. Meng Yao delivers this order to the Captain of the Guard, who decides he’s going to be a giant prick about it. He’s too good to take orders from the bastard son of a whore. Meng Yao puts on his best retail smile and says that he’ll make do.

Meanwhile, the others are discussing the yin iron and the Wen sect’s demand to send disciples. Nie Mingjue says Lan Xichen has written to him and he thinks Lan Wangji should go back to Cloud Recesses. There’s only one piece of yin iron left unlocated and Xue Yang clearly knows where it is, so they’ll take it from here. Wei Wuxian reluctantly agrees that he and Jiang Cheng should probably head home too, to see how their father wants to handle the Wen sect’s demands.

Int, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

Wen soldiers have showed up. It’s bad. Lan Qiren tells Lan Xichen that he should take their most precious knowledge and run away. Lan Xichen tries to argue but Lan Qiren insists.

Ext, The Unclean Realm [Qinghe]

The Captain of the Guard is still being an asshole to Meng Yao, this time while drunk.

Wei Wuxian, also drunk, has decided to sleep on Lan Wangji’s roof like any well-adjusted person would.

Lan Wangji gives him a longing stare and says ‘farewell’ under his breath like the stoic repressed gay he is, before heading back home.

ENTER MINIMUM WAGE REPRESENTATION MAN

The next morning, Wen Chao shows up with his Head Henchman, Wen Zhuliu. He’s clearly there because Wen Chao can’t find his ass with two hands and a flashlight. They demand the release of Xue Yang and grandstand a lot. Nie Mingjue tells them to fuck off.

There’s a big fight, mostly between Nie Mingjue and Wen Zhuliu.

Someone shouts that Xue Yang has escaped. Nie Mingjue makes it to the prison and finds Meng Yao standing there with a sword through the gut of the Captain of the Guard. We all take a moment to wish that we could stab the people who have bullied us. Nie Mingjue, however, does not agree, and is very upset. Meng Yao hilariously says ‘Xue Yang did it’ even though he’s literally got his hand on the hilt of the blade. Nice going, Meng Yao. I spend the next ten months wondering if that was a translation error.

Wen Chao (or maybe Wen Zhuliu? I don’t remember tbh) throws his sword at Nie Mingjue. Meng Yao leaps in front of it and gets lightly stabbed. Then Wen Chao talks a lot of shit about how much the Nie sect sucks and also the Lan sect sucks and his brother has taken men to go burn Cloud Recesses to the ground. Everyone is upset. Wen Chao gallantly agrees he’ll let them off the hook for the day, but if they fuck with the Wen sect again, they’ll regret it.

Nie Mingjue drags Meng Yao inside and they have a messy breakup. Meng Yao tries to explain that the Captain of the Guard was a big douchebag, bullied him for years, and took credit for his accomplishments. Nie Mingjue points out that this was not an excuse to murder him. Because Meng Yao just saved his life, he says he won’t execute him, but exiles him from Qinghe.

Meng Yao bids farewell to Nie Huaisang, who is upset and tries to get his brother to reconsider, but Nie Mingjue is adamant. Everyone seems to forget that Meng Yao just got fucking stabbed. He’ll walk it off.

So who released Xue Yang? This question is actually never answered! Did the captain of the guard do it for some reason, and Meng Yao stabbed him because he caught him in the act? Did Meng Yao do it? If so, why? Did he have nefarious purposes? Or did he do it because he thought it would make the Wen sect withdraw and stop attacking The Unclean Realm? Did the Wen soldiers get to him and let him out? Did Xue Yang just escape on his own? You may believe any canon that you wish. (My personal head canon is generally that Meng Yao released him to try to get the Wen soldiers to withdraw, but I’ve also written some variations.)

Ext, Lotus Pier [Yunmeng]

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian are home. Yay! They reunite with Jiang Yanli. It is cute.

ENTER A PAIR OF EXTREMELY BAD PARENTS

So here’s the tea on the super dysfunctional family that basically drives this whole story. Jiang Fengmian is the head of the Yunmeng Jiang sect. His wife is Yu Ziyuan. He didn’t really want to marry her, mostly because he was in love with another woman named Cangse Sanren. However, the leaders of their two sects were pushing them to marry for alliance reasons. Jiang Fengmian kept refusing, but then Cangse Sanren married a guy named Wei Changze, who was one of Jiang Fengmian’s close friends. Since she was no longer an option, Jiang Fengmian then agreed to marry Yu Ziyuan. They hate each other.

The two of them had two kids, Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng. Jiang Yanli is not a strong cultivator and seems to have some health issues, although these are never detailed. Therefore all the sect responsibilities fall to Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli was betrothed to Jin Zixuan (whose mother was the sect sister of Yu Ziyuan).

Meanwhile, Cangse Sanren is what we call a ‘rogue cultivator’ ie a cultivator who is not formally part of any sect. Wei Changze was a servant at Lotus Pier. They had Wei Wuxian and went to fight evil. When Wei Wuxian was four, they were killed by a monster. He lived on the streets for about three years before Jiang Fengmian found him and adopted him.

Yu Ziyuan is super pissed that Jiang Fengmian adopted the child of the woman he was in love with. She’s also super pissed because Wei Wuxian happens to be a more powerful cultivator than Jiang Cheng. Jiang Fengmian is very indulgent of Wei Wuxian’s behavior because, you know, his parents died, and Jiang Fengmian loved his mother and was friends with his father. Yu Ziyuan constantly accuses Jiang Fengmian of loving Wei Wuxian more than he loves their own son, constantly abuses Wei Wuxian for having the audacity to exist in her home and be a good cultivator, and constantly berates Jiang Cheng for not being as strong as Wei Wuxian and says he’s not going to be a good sect leader. Meanwhile Jiang Fengmian can’t be arsed to reassure Jiang Cheng that yes, he does love him very much. Jiang Yanli basically raised both the brothers which is probably the only reason they turned out as well as they did.

tl;dr this is a super toxic environment for everyone involved

Ext, Cloud Recesses [Gusu]

ENTER A MAN WHOSE POSITION IMPLIES HE SHOULD BE IMPORTANT YET PLAYS LITTLE ROLE IN THE STORY

Wen Xu, the first son of Wen Ruohan, is coordinating the attack on Cloud Recesses.

Lan Wangji arrives in time to find most of his sect rushing to shelter in the magic cave because the Wen troops are slaughtering everyone there.

A bunch of disciples are trapped outside because only members of the Lan bloodline can get in. Wen Xu starts murdering them all until one will tell him how to get in.

ENTER A 2 WHO THINKS HE IS A 10

A disciple named Su She, who incidentally is the guy who lost his sword in the lake like a dumbass while fighting the water demon, tells Wen Xu that only members of the Lan bloodline can get in and he could do it if he had one of the Magic Ribbons.

Lan Wangji emerges from the cave to try to fight off Wen Xu and a zillion guys single-handedly. Unsurprisingly, this does not work and he is captured. Since he’s got the yin iron, Wen Xu decides that’s good enough and they take off. Everyone left behind presumably calls Su She a jerk.

Int, Lotus Pier [Yunmeng]

They’ve received the demands from the Wen sect. Jiang Cheng is the inner heir disciple and he has to go. Wei Wuxian says he’ll go too. Yu Ziyuan tells him nobody gives a shit what the son of a servant does.

Ext, The Indoctrination Bureau, which may or may not be in Nightless City. It sure seems like it is but then later it sure seems like it isn’t [Qishan]

Wen Chao has lined all the disciples up outside so he can insult them and brag about how great he is. Wei Wuxian is worried because Lan Wangji isn’t there at first, but then he’s escorted in, clearly injured and trying not to show it.

Wen Chao forces them all to surrender their swords. Surprisingly it’s Jin Zixuan who picks a fight about this.

ENTER A WOMAN WHO IS NOT PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS SHIT

Jin Zixuan’s retainer, a woman named Luo Qingyang but who everyone calls Mianmian because of how cute she is, calms him down and reminds him that Jin Zixuan’s father told them not to make trouble. He’s pissed but hands his sword over. So does everyone else.

(A note on swords: there are strong implications that the swords are semi-sentient and connected to their bearers on a spiritual level. I’m sure I would know more about this if I was more familiar with xianxia. But the long and the short of it is that taking their swords is a Big Fucking Deal.)

Wen Chao tells them all to memorize ‘The Quintessence of Wen’, basically the rules of their sect.

Ext, somewhere nearby [Qishan]

Wen Ning is excited that Wei Wuxian is in Qishan and asks Wen Qing if he can go outside and play. Wen Qing says no because Wei Wuxian is supposed to be their enemy. Wen Ning uses sad puppy eyes. It has no effect.

Ext, The Indoctrination Bureau [Qishan]

Wen Chao tells them to recite the Wen stuff. Lan Wangji refuses. Jin Zixuan refuses.

Wei Wuxian eagerly volunteers, and then like the chaos gremlin he is, starts reciting the Lan principles instead. Wen Chao is pissed. Lan Wangji is smitten. Even Jin Zixuan thinks it’s funny. Jiang Cheng is upset that Wei Wuxian is causing trouble but he also thinks it’s funny and just won’t admit it.

Wen Chao punishes Wei Wuxian, Lan Wangji, and Jin Zixuan by making them do some menial labor involving buckets of dung. Jin ‘never done a day of actual labor in his life’ Zixuan is the most upset about this.

Wei Wuxian takes the opportunity to try to talk to Lan Wangji about the yin iron and what happened at Cloud Recesses and why he’s injured. Wen Chao gets even more pissy and throws Wei Wuxian in a dungeon with a terrible CGI wolf monster. Wei Wuxian nearly gets eaten but Wen Qing intervenes by using long distance acupuncture to knock the monster out with throwing needles. Wen Ning brings him some medicine to stop the bleeding from his multiple wounds.

The next day, they’re still reciting the stupid Wen stuff, or at least pretending to. Nie Huaisang either falls asleep on his feet, passes out, or decides this is bullshit and pretends to pass out, and is dragged back to his guest house.

The rest of them go on a field trip.

ENTER THE HUMAN VERSION OF PERIOD CRAMPS

Wen Chao has a girlfriend, somehow. Her name is Jiaojiao and she is the absolute worst.

They head off to a mountain where bad mojo is going around. Wen Chao is clearly planning to use all these cultivators as cannon fodder, because he’s a fucking asshole. Wen Zhuliu accompanies them, presumably because Wen Chao will trip over his own sword and die if left to his own devices. Wen Qing also comes along, even though she’d clearly rather not. Wen Chao keeps hitting on Mianmian and it makes Jiaojiao jealous.

Lan Wangji is limping badly. Wei Wuxian wants to help him. Jiang Cheng tells him they’ve got their own problems and they shouldn’t get involved in other people’s business. Wei Wuxian says, ‘but consider: I do what I want’. He offers to carry Lan Wangji, who refuses. So instead Wei Wuxian uses a little paper talisman to ask Wen Qing if she can help them out. She calls for a break so they can get some water.

Wen Chao tells her she’s too soft-hearted. She tells him he thinks too much, which seems vastly inaccurate.

Int, Muxi Mountain [Qishan]

They find a cave and go inside. There’s a steep drop off and nobody wants to go see what’s at the bottom, so Wen Chao pushes Wei Wuxian over the edge. Everyone is pissed about this, and they all have to climb down.

They’ve discovered an underground lake and the home of the monster! But it’s nowhere to be found. Wen Chao wants to string someone up and cut them to attract it. Jiaojiao suggests Mianmian. Wen Chao clearly doesn’t want to because he has the hots for her. Jin Zixuan tells him to get his grubby eyeballs off his friend. For the first time in the show, we feel a jot of respect for Jin Zixuan.

One of the other disciples tries to grab Mianmian anyway, Jin Zixuan intervenes, and there’s a big fight.

Wei Wuxian tells Wen Chao that using his position to bully others means he should be executed, using the words they had to memorize from the Quintessence of Wen. Wen Chao doesn’t recognize their own principles. Everyone laughs at him, and Wen Zhuliu looks like he’d rather be flipping burgers at McDonald’s than have this stupid job.

While Wen Zhuliu is distracted mentally updating his resume, Wei Wuxian grabs Wen Chao, puts a sword to his throat, and jumps to a rock in the middle of the lake. He tells Wen Chao to make all his guys lower their blades. But then, uh oh! Turns out the rock he jumped to is in fact the monster, which is a terrible CGI turtle snake thing.

There’s another big fight. Jiaojiao decides that this is an ideal time to punish Mianmian for being pretty near other people, and tries to burn her with a hot iron. Wei Wuxian jumps in between them and gets hit with it.

At some point, Wen Chao decides fuck this. The Wen soldiers all retreat, dragging Wen Qing with them, cut the ropes to the bottom of the cliff, and seal the entrance.

They find an underwater exit from the cave. While Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian fight the monster and keep it distracted, the other cultivators escape. But they don’t manage to make it out themselves. They’re now trapped in a cave together, soaking wet and wounded. Thank you, Untamed.

Wei Wuxian teases Lan Wangji and is too stupid to realize he’s flirting. Lan Wangji prays for patience. He tells Wei Wuxian that he went back to Cloud Recesses and that his uncle is injured and his brother is missing. Wei Wuxian covers Lan Wangji with his robe while he sleeps. We all swoon.

In order to get out, they have to kill the monster. Wei Wuxian goes inside it and we all very studiously do not ask which entrance he went through.

The inside of this monster is very gross. There’s a black sword inside it which emanates evil energy. Wei Wuxian grabs it because he is sixteen and stupid. He hears lots of screaming ghosts and such, but hangs onto it anyway because he is sixteen and stupid. They kill the terrible CGI turtle snake thing but it collapses on top of the exit so they still can’t get out. Wei Wuxian is badly injured. Lan Wangji sings to him and there is a montage of their significant moments together up to this point, because the Chinese censors apparently weren’t looking.

Ext, Muxi Mountain [Qishan]

Wei Wuxian wakes up to find he is outside. Jin Zixuan and Jiang Cheng have rescued him. Lan Wangji has already left to go back to Cloud Recesses to look for his brother. Wei Wuxian is still holding onto the creepy sword. They awkwardly thank Jin Zixuan for helping out with the rescue. Jin Zixuan awkwardly accepts their thanks and then bounces. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng head back to Lotus Pier.

Nobody ever mentions how Nie Huaisang gets out of Qishan, and for some reason I find this very funny.

~end part 2~

#the untamed #liveblog

[jadeile-writes]

Fanfic Progress Update 150

It’s still January and I’m lowkey disappointed in time for that.

No spoilery glimpses into any fic(s) at the end, cause I don’t have anything that’ll be posted anytime soon. Eventually, tho.

Current WIPs:

Rolling with it

Fandom: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Summary (temporary): Link finds out that Revali doesn’t understand sign language, so he decides to get through a conversation by miming and showing emotions, just this once. Turns out Revali is (somewhat) less of an asshole once he understands the reason behind Link’s quietness. Link/Revali.

Progress: Chapters 1-3 have been edited and are ready. Chapter four is still just almost done... as in, I didn’t finish it today, because I’ve been suffering from flu/cold/whatever the entire effing January on-off and today my brain feels too fuzzy to do shit.

Dude. I began this miserable mcfucking year by spraining my wrist. Then a couple of days later I catch the cold and thus I spend a week on sick vacay for the wrist but also conveniently for the cold. Then I get one (1) extra day at the start of the next week for the cold, but can’t ask for more cause I’m starting to feel/look fine. And I do actually feel like 90% fine for about two days before I start feeling a bit worse again and just kinda hide it at work cause I can’t ask for another sick vacay that soon for shit like “Whoops, I think the cold is coming back”. So I act like I’m not sick for two more days until it’s the weekend and I can stay bundled up and try to get better. Again, after the rest I feel moderately fine for a couple of days at work and then I’ve been feeling worse again, woop! Yesterday I was coughing quite a lot and today I feel lowkey fuzzy and lack the energy to do anything I meant to do today (some of which is getting kinda urgent). I effing hate this stupid cold-ridden month by now and I resent having to work instead of getting to stay at home to properly get better. Here’s two bigass middle fingers at 2022 and Januaries and colds and worklife in general t( -_- t )

—–

Hah! Our afterlife is the most hilarious bushwa, dearest

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel

Summary: This is not a stand-alone story! This is a oneshot/drabble collection in the universe as “Shit, the Radio Demon is a part of my afterlife”. Read the main story before bothering with this one.

I decided to give my readers a chance to throw Radiohusk prompts at me, and had the Afterlife-verse as an option to set the stories in. Everyone liked that, so this fic is now a thing. Enjoy the extra mischief from these two dorks!

Progress: Chapter 28 is the current latest chapter and was posted on 27th of November 2020. Chapter 29 is technically written, but I’ll need to look it over to see if I want to tweak it before I can call it done, cause I remember being unsatisfied. The scheduled posting date is Some Friday, and there will be a sneak-peek on the Previous Thursday. Chapter 30 is half-done as well and is basically the only actual thing holding this fic back. … -sobs in absolutely horrible author-

Note to new people who might be looking at this: I’m not taking prompts anymore. These will be the last chapters, and then the fic will be done.

—–  

Other WIPs I’m not currently working on but intend to get back to someday:

PoE Drabbles (Pillars of Eternity)

DC Drabbles (Justice League)

Diaphanous Relations (Forgotten Realms, R.A. Salvatore’s books)

A bunch of Hazbin oneshots and chapter fics, some started, some just on the idea phase. There’s… there’s a lot…

—–

That’s it for the WIPs! Here’s a space that’ll eventually have sneak-peeks for future fanfics and/or chapters again, once I have something relevant to show.

—–

That’s it this time. See you next Saturday!

Links:

My AO3   My FFnet   My Ko-fi    Radiohusk Discord Server

#Fanfic progress update

[gothamstreetcat]

If you have time and want to, I’d love to see what you’d say are your creations to come from the Unofficial Batcat Fam. So, basically, ✨ + Itzel, Kayleigh, you, and Sophie’s stuff. (People changed their URLs and I’m on mobile so I’m not typing them out in fear of messing up the URLs. YOU’RE AMAZING AND CRAZY TALENTED AND SO KIND AND I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST DAYS AHEAD!)

girl don’t ask me why it took me so long to respond... i’ve been feeling nostalgic and i miss you guys a bunch. i love you all so much and i think each of you is extremely talented. i’m very blessed to be part of our little batfam

Itzel ✨ @brvceselina

desrest itzel, (i scrolled through all your edits by the way) as much as i’d like to scream again over this edit, i’d like to bring particular attention to your let selina kyle be this happy challenge (petition to make this my new header? I think so) and your because you matter to me edit. first off, i really admire how naturally stunning your gifs always look and i think it’s a real shame i feel you don’t get the credit you deserve. i mean really, your gifs look very natural and yet in so many of them selina is truly glowing. i also really admire all the fonts you use because they are really delicate looking and pretty. i wish i looked as gorgeous and happy as selina in your ‘be happy challenge’ but also i really want that sweater. maybe in black, though? the blue is so striking against selina’s smile and cheeks! i just love her. for your ‘because you matter to me’ edit i really love the quote you choose. it tears be apart because selina really does deserve those things and by god bruce is probably the only person to hold her without selfishness. i could stare at this gifset for hours and i think you really can see the relief in selina’s face and you captured it so well. this set is just so perfect in every way because bruce is all these things and more. catch me writing a fic, i dare ya.

Kayleigh 💜 @marthaskane

girl, you know i think the internet is beyond blessed to have your unique sense of style. i really like both your heroes vs villains sets. your torchwood set is to die for. this selina set is so freaking fierce you could cut the competition with that blue coloring it is gorgeous. it’s really so very hard to pick one but i think i really wanna highlight your batparents x batcat set for a minute. I think i could actually scream about this for hours if i had my mead on straight. can i just say, you mind? you really are perfect for putting this together and consistency aside, i just love it. pennyworth had to have know what they were doing to us giving us the parallel between thomas and martha--and golly there are a lot. it makes you wonder if in some small way, bruce and selina are to suffer the same fate as them. i mean, it’s gotta be some kind of fate that they’ve both been in that same position over the one they love (although, as i’m writing this stupidly i realize that i’m sure thomas getting shot is somehow to be a reflection of his and martha’s murder--but still. but, could you imagine martha being with him at the hospital and them having to pretend to be married--bickering when the doctor walks in and says they seem like an old married couple and martha is like haha, unless... i wish there was more i could say but i really think this set speaks for itself. p.s i have a lot of your old sets in my drafts so hopefully they get some good tags along the way ;) 

Sophie 💕 @clara-oswin-oswald 

sophie, you know i think all your doctor who edits are top. fucking. tier. but if i had to pick  a favorite i think it would be this purple one (it is really just so pretty). i also really love the coloring you did for this edit (it might just be my fav)--like, if i could be green with envy, that’s exactly the shade of green i’d like to be. really in love with your coloring on this set and this set. of course, your dc edits are also awesome and even if purple is not your color you really use it well! this was such a lovely color pallete as well. yeah, i miss your gifs and i just think you’re super talented 

Emily ♥️ @apple-grass-and-smiles​

you didn’t think i’d skip you did i? first off, big shout out to your fic a death by a thousands cuts would be easier because you mentioned everyone in our little batfam, so it deserves an honorable mention. also, feels like i’ve been listening to this song a lot lately so... however, the fic that really does it for me has to be shiny toy with a price. maybe i cheated a little by just looking at my tags for this one, but it really helps me know what i wanna say--AND WHAT I WANT TO SAY IS how perfect this fanfic is. I can’t help myself, can i just copy my tags here because--

#I love all the little details you have poured in the beginning talking about the flat/snacks#detail is literally what I live for #My FAVorite bit what when you described Bruce needing to realize he'd totally go off a cliff just because Selina was doing it too #which is such a good line (and I'd totally steal it if I could) simply because you talked about how Bruce needs rules and guidlines #based off of how he grew up #But Selina somehow causes him to be a little wild which he loves #he would fucking follow her anywhere and not question why #not only that. but going into your entire labeling conversation #I really think it digs deep down somewhere where Bruce only wants to show his love for Selina and Share her in some way with the world #he loves her and he's not ashamed to be with or around her on every level #and yes that scares the absolute shit out of her because no one has ever loved or seen her like Bruce #and it's funny because I think the two of them will always have this crazy idea of I'm not good enough #And I really respect Selina's 'why can't we just be us?' line because it's my favorite #also I LOVED the little details of Bruce betting Alfred's and Selina betting things Bruce has in his room #because he probably doesn't even know #and it's like. they spend christmas together and Selina panics and wraps whatever Bruce has in his room #and he opens the freaking box so happy and grateful not even realizing his father bought it for him years ago #and I love how he put her legs back over him #and how he didn't want to keep her a secret #and the 'I could be bleeding' line is so ironic considering she was bleeding right in front of him and he was the First to know #with her blood running wet and hot between his fingers but all that and it really shook him when Selina did what she did #Emily you are so talented and I hope you continue to write

so yeah... that’s my lazy contribution. but also, i wanna add how i’ve always loved that despite bruce and selina feeling like neither is good enough for the other, they are not ashamed to be together. or seen together. and i feel like it’s obvious how hard it is for bruce to fit in yet, with selina it feels like he doesn’t have to try to fit in or be someone he’s not. and i saw somewhere today how selina was telling bruce if he didn’t give her the knife “barbara would never see her as an equal” yet, with bruce she already is an equal, and she always was. 

i think i should stop myself because i really don’t want to go overboard or bother anyone or hurt their feelings. i kinda wanna skip me but if i really have a fav we all know it’s my batcat x lover well... maybe my daytime edit too and love letter

#thank you for all your kind words dear #i hope i wrote enough for you guys #just know that i love you all and i think you all are so super talented #this has been in my drafts forever and i think i got burned out towards the end #plus dog is being a real challenge lately #asks: emily #creator compliments* #long post

[lamphous]

doing both games from @tallsaint​ together to perpetuate this new crossbred tag meme

10 songs I’ve been listening to lately:

“the pretender” by jackson browne — I HAVE LISTENED TO THIS SONG 22 TIMES IN THE PAST TWO WEEKS, I DON’T KNOW WHY, I JUST CAN’T STOP

“people” from funny girl

“a self called nowhere” by they might be giants — swear to god, dudes, this song is about It like the book

“body of years” by mother mother

“jesus was a cross maker” by judee sill — “down where the valley are low” is another wonderful song by her, but I heard this one on a sufjan spotify playlists recently & hoo boy

“the dismemberment song” by blue kid

“lido shuffle” by boz scaggs — I will finally finish halt and catch fire this year if it kills me!!!

“I can’t help myself” by the gems — SONG OF THE CENTURY

I’ve also been listening to the muppet movie soundtrack nonstop since I got back home bc it’s the ultimate roadtrip music

“symphony for a spider planet” by mort garson

and a social distancing meme:

Are you staying home from work/school? yes 😔 and “home” home as well, back with my family in minnesota. I’ve commandeered the unused desk in the living room and stacked my two dozen books there and made a pseudo dc shine in a sad attempt at normality

If you’re staying home, who is with you? my parents and two younger siblings, three of whom are also working from home. hooray.

Who would be your ideal quarantine mate? honestly, my best friend, my roommate, or the girl I have feelings for, in order of increasing impossibility due to physical distance.

Are you a homebody? yes, and even I’m starting to feel it lol. I miss my museums. I miss the library. I miss sitting on benches and watching people go past.

An event you were looking forward to that got canceled? the new welcome to night vale live show! it’s been rescheduled to november, but I was really looking forward to it especially since I’m writing my thesis on architecture in modern horror and even just the premise of this new show promised much to talk about

What movies have you watched recently? this weekend I watched: - john mulaney & the sack lunch bunch (again, with my mom) - also kid gorgeous (again, with my mom) - the cabin in the woods (again) - midsommar - train to busan (again) - bachelor mother - steve jobs - self made: inspired by the life of madam cj walker and my parents & I are planning on doing double features of the docs they did documentary now parodies of + the episodes themselves

What shows are you watching? I just started westworld this morning! and I’m trying to finally finish halt and catch fire: I think about once a year I pick it up again with the intent to see it through, and I love it a lot! I just can never get to the end for some reason

What music are you listening to? the mountain goats, bruce springsteen, mother mother, the funny girl soundtrack inexplicably, pete seeger, candypants, tom rosenthal, the magnetic fields, bad bad hats

What are you reading? I’m currently in the middle of zigzagger by manuel munoz, the subtle knife by philip pullman, old futures: speculative fiction and queer possibility by alexis lothian, and the wrath of khan novelization for classes, plus the poetics of space by gaston bachelard and it again for my thesis next year and danny lavery’s new book something that may shock and discredit you for fun when I can

What are you doing for self-care? I’m working on, like, five separate scary clown movie fics simultaneously. there’s a very stupid 107+ page pair of 5+1s abt physical/emotional intimacy that I’ve been working on since mid-november, a stupid stan resurrection plot one about princess bride narrative mechanics and suicidal ideation, another stand-up special transcript, and a very VERY dumb au of company, y’know, the musical. this is my idea of self care.

I tag whoever wants! We Are All starved for human interaction & love talking about ourselves

#tagged #i feel like im reading another book also but i cant remember what #oh! ive been reading a lot of misc poems both professional and by my classmates lol thats it #'keaton are you really actively reading 7 books simultaneously rn' english major life babey!

[raging-violets]

Fictober 2019 // Day 22 + 23 // By: Rhuben

Prompt Number: #22, “We could have a chance”, #23 “You can’t give more than yourself.” Fandom: The Flash (DC TV) Rating: E Warning: None A/N: This will kind of, sort of, be a series based on the friendship around Eddie Thawne and my OC, Averey Moore. If I like some parts enough, I might even re-work them into my fics.

"Ok," Joe said to Barry, Eddie, and Averey, "let's just keep focused you guys. We could have a chance here. A chance to finally bring this to an end, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief." He jabbed the air with his finger. "This will go down in history of the CCPD."

"Right up your alley, huh, Eddie?" Barry asked with a grin, using the back of his hand to strike Eddie in the chest. "Add this to your tally book."

"You can't give more than yourself," Joe said, "but we need to give this our all. Failure is not an option."

"It's dodgeball," Eddie protested, throwing a hand in the air, "not war." Tough, even he found himself letting out a pseudo-war cry every time the whistle blew starting another round.

"Correction," Averey said, gently touching the black marks on her cheeks after wiping sweat from her face with her arm, "this is war. We're just using bloody rubber balls and not rubber bullets, hey."

"Exactly." Joe crossed his arms over his chest, tightening the material over the CCPD logo on the front of his navy and gray t-shirt. "Do you know how many times we've come up against the CFD over the years and lost?" All at once, the four of them came out of their huddle to peer across the basketball court black top to the men and women in red and gray t-shirts. Spectators in the stands cheered, clapped, and waved flags. Eliminated players stood on the sidelines, shouting words of encouragement. A banner gently blew in the breeze with the words "CCPD/CFD Family and Friends Dodgeball Tournament. "Too many times!"

"This time they're going down," Barry agreed. "They were a little too joyous after that volleyball game two years ago." He kicked at the ground. "So you cheer a little too early, that doesn't mean you deserve a ball to the face."

Joe patted Barry on the shoulder. "That's the most into a game I've seen you play, I was proud," he said.

"What do you mean?" Barry asked with a frown. "I lasted a long time at dodge ball in school."

"Because you hid behind the bigger kids and waited for them to get wiped out," Joe replied.

Averey put a hand over her mouth but couldn't stop herself from laughing. Eddie grinned. "So, clearly, I got all the athletic genes in the Allen family, yeah?" Averey said. Barry pulled his mouth to the side, but didn't say anything. She shook her head back and forth. "Ok, so I think Eddie and I should charge out first and get as many of the dodgeballs back on our side—"

"That's how all our plays have started," Joe reminded her, "we need to mix it up a bit. They're bound to have caught on by now." At Averey's noise of protest, he struck her with a fixed look and said, "They were gunning for you so hard last time, I doubt Eddie rolling out of the way will work again."

Eddie smiled to himself. He didn't know how he had managed that. The whistle had blown to start a round of the game. He had charged quickly towards the center line, exploding from his spot with his teammates. He had reached the dodgeballs first, grabbing one to protect himself with and using his free hand to knock back as many dodgeballs to the CCPD side of the court as he could. Many of the CFD players had the same plan he did and with the dodgeballs they managed to receive started throwing at him as quickly as possible. Eddie had ducked and dodged out of the way before he had found himself colliding with the black top and he did the only thing he thought to do – roll.

"Roll!" He heard his team-mates shout as he spun himself around and around, arms tucked tight to his chest. "Roll, roll, roll!" He could hear the dodgeballs bouncing off the black top all around him, whiffing pats him. None of the balls thrown at him landed. Admittedly, it was one of the better plays seen in that game he had to admit.

"Fine," Averey said, crossing her arms over her chest. She craned her neck, looking out over at the opposing team.

"Ok, here's the plan," Joe said, adjusting the hat that sat backwards on his head. He lowered his voice into a whisper and delegated the plan to the final standing members of his team. "All right, let's do it."

"Come on, partner, we've got this," Eddie said, bumping fists with Averey. "I've got your back."

"And I'll do a better time of protecting the front," Averey said with a sheepish grin. "Sorry about that."

Eddie made a face. A diving catch on her part had earned a bunch of cheers from spectators that quickly had turned into a collective "oooh" at the throw that had nailed Eddie directly in the nether regions. "Reckon, for once, I really didn't see it coming."

"A split-jump wasn't the greatest idea I had at the time I'll admit," Eddie commented. "But we've got this. When it doubt protect Barry."

"God knows even if he can't run, he can calculate the path of a ball and try to get out of the way," Averey commented as they moved to their start line.

Eddie laughed to himself, planting his hands on his hips as he joined Joe and Barry at their start line. One in position, he leaned forward, eyes on the rubber dodgeballs sitting in the center of the court. The whistle was blown, and Eddie and Joe rushed forward. Reaching the first dodgeball, he grabbed it and flung it backwards to Averey who caught it – the familiar sound of a thump and high-pitched ringing hitting his ears.

He heard the same sound to his left, signaling Barry's catch from Joe as well. Eddie grabbed a second ball and threw it directly up into the air. He watched with a smile as the member of the fire department across form him watched the ball fly high into the air before he was smacked in the stomach by two dodge balls, thrown one each by Barry and Averey.

"Yes!" Eddie cheered.

#fictober19 #fd: the flash #eddie thawne #oc: averey moore #brotp: criminal law #prompt #authored by: rhuben

[peppersandcats]

Well okay.

So I have just finished the Elseworlds crossover, and while there is a lot to say, I feel like geeking about stuff from a very specific perspective. It is the perspective of someone whose knowledge of DC comics is extremely patchy--as I may have mentioned before, I think I spent around twenty years knowing that J’onn J’onzz was a Martian, the last survivor of an ancient race, somewhat religious, and fond of Oreos.

(If you can figure out where I learned that information and only that information, congrats! It will come up again later.)

A decade-ish later, I learned he could shapeshift.

The whole “telepath who can credibly punch a Kryptonian” thing didn’t come up until sometime in the last couple of years.

Also: spoilers ahead.

So this is not a critical analysis; this is me squee-ing over things I think I have seen that remind me of other things. And I mean... maybe this is all totally obvious and everyone who’s been looking at the script and the character names knows it? Or maybe this is as purely a product of my own personal geekery/history as my inability to not read comics!Commander Cold as a Judge Dredd homage? I don’t know. But I’m happy.

Mostly this is about the second and third episodes of Elseworlds, although in the first episode I did notice that they defeated Amazo by uploading a virus (at arrowpoint) through his eye, and in comics!Flashpoint he was deactivated by Plastic Man going in through his eye and plucking out his operating system (namely Ray Palmer). Is that a standard Amazo-coping tactic?

((also: holy crap comics!Flashpoint was grim.))

The Shakespeare head in Kate Kane’s office was a reference to the old Batman TV show, right? The Adam West one? They’d... pull on the head and the grandfather clock would slide sideways and they’d go down the Batpole and be in costume when they got to the Batcave, I think? (I laughed.)

I liked that Mark Guggenheim showed up as an inmate. Or his name did; I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup to tell you if he was in any of the shots.

I squeaked so hard when other!Barry (old-TV!Barry? who knows?) looked at John and was surprised he didn’t have a ring. John Diggle as a Green Lantern makes me happy. He would knock that out of the park. I like Diggle.

Also: Alex Danvers, badass on any Earth. I love Alex Danvers being a badass. I love that in the first season, you can see her going hand-to-hand with a Kryptonian, and a bunch of other DEA agents are just running past like “yep, it’s Agent Danvers, she’s got that, she’s fine”.

Was so pleased to see that the Book of Destiny was written in the Speed Force language. Of course it makes sense.

One thing I didn’t think was a reference, but that I loved about the third episode; all our main characters are in black-and-white. Mostly black. Just seeing those characters who are usually so damn bright in such utterly colourless outfits was a kind of lovely note about the setting. (Also, one thing I didn’t catch but that the LOML pointed out to me as we were watching: black-and-white Superman is Justice Lords Superman. (My understanding of Justice Lords comes secondhand from @demiurgent and can best be summed up as “those fascist versions of the Justice League that Billy Batson was absolutely not like”.))

Loved no-powers everyone's-a-criminal Barry and Ollie, too. Looking forward to fics. (Also, was I the only one looking at Barry and thinking he always looks like kind of a doof when he's dressed up as a criminal?)

I honestly wasn’t sure Barry wasn’t going to die. Partly that was the suspension of disbelief kicking in enough to make me ignore that we’ve got mumble more episodes this season and it’d probably be hard to miss Tumblr flipping out over the actor not being on contract or something. Partly that was... well, this season has been about Nora coping with Barry disappearing, and the skies were red which is a callback to That Headline from the time vault, and That Headline references the Crisis, and I have managed not to miss the fact that ?Monitor + Crisis + Barry running until he starts to fall apart can mean he dies. Like, there’s precedent. I didn’t think they’d kill both him and Kara, and wouldn’t kill just him on someone else’s show, but you know...

It was nice, to be unsure. It made them surviving even more awesome.

Also: props to you, Oliver Queen, for yelling loud enough that the Monitor actually decided to talk to you. I have suspicions about what you two talked about, and they are heavily related to your very bad habit of not telling people shit, but props.

But the big thing, for me, was Deegan.

(This ties back to where I first learnt about J’onn J’onzz.)

So. In the first ep, Deegan is a poorly-presented kind of dude who’s got unspecified but weird ideas about how to help his patients. Okay. That could be a “good intent, bad execution” kind of guy. He was going on about his patients feeling inferior, and about how to make people feel super without them actually being super. I legit thought he might have swapped Barry and Ollie because he wanted to see if letting someone be super would be safe, and thought that giving a hero superhero powers might be a small way to test it.

(Yeah, I’m a gentle optimist sometimes.)

But the second episode, man.

He’s from Arkham and has a history of being horrible to his patients. He’s wielding an object of Destiny to reshape reality. In fact, he’s wielding an object that might or might not be something the Monitor uses (hell if I know, I only vaguely figured there was a Monitor because I’d heard there was an Anti-Monitor), but that is called the Book of Destiny and is definitely looking like Destiny’s book in which all things are written.

I’m sure there are other gigantic tomes in the DC universe, but that one is mine.

And I begin to hope that instead of John Deegan, I’m seeing Dr. John Dee. Doctor Destiny. I mean, we’ve got an Arkham inhabitant who got his hands on a reality-rewriting artifact belonging to one of the Endless and is making himself a god and making things horrible-- that’s him, right?

And then he gets affected at the end of the third episode, and... yeah, I’m going with that being him.

Dr. John Dee is (for me) from the first Sandman graphic novel, which I loved very much; the issue “24 Hours” was probably the high point of my introduction to horror comics that were not of the EC genre or gloppy adaptations of public-domain short-stories. (Not that there’s anything wrong with EC. (I... I’m now envisioning Dr. John Dee as drawn by Ghastly Graham Ingels, and I may need to lie down a moment. That’s approaching Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark levels of creep factor.))

(My introduction to J’onn J’onzz was also from the first Sandman graphic novel. Like two pages in which I saw him interact with Dream and Scott Free.)

But yeah. For the longest time, the only DC I read was some Batman and some Vertigo, and Sandman was the reason I read Vertigo. And I haven’t read a lot of it in years and I still remember it, and I got to see part of it on the small screen.

And 2019: I’m holding out for the Eye Guy. Don’t disappoint me.

#personal #dc tv: elseworlds #dr. john dee #spoilers #dc comics #dc tv #the flash #arrow #supergirl #dr. john deegan #john diggle #barry allen #oliver queen #kara zor el #alex danvers #kate kane #squee #horror #the corinthian #commentary #my commentary

[dhaskoi]

Love, Judgment & Forgiveness

This was my entry for the Supercat Christmas in July fic exchange for the incomparable #damelola.  If you liked my earlier drabble about Lena getting caught with the kryptonite you might like this too.

Cat leans back in her seat with a sigh as she lays the paper down on the empty seat next to her, the DC cityscape slipping by outside the town car’s window.  When you work in the big white house your workday never really ends, but she’s found that with an early start she can snatch some time to herself on the drive in, usually spent flipping through her preferred papers.  Her fondness for newsprint is a little old fashioned, especially when her own publications (and she will always think of them as hers, no matter what shenanigans take place with CatCo stock) are steadily switching over to a focus on digital content.  The smoothness of the transition a significantly greater online presence is one of the things James has gotten right.  But Cat can’t imagine a time when she won’t love the tangibility of ink under her fingers, the weight of the folded paper in her hands, the rustle of the pages.  The day that picking up her morning paper doesn’t give her a little thrill she’ll know it’s time to cart herself off to a nursing home to play shuffleboard and be wheeled out into the sunlight at set times like a potted plant.  God willing she’ll die before there’s any risk of that.

She knew it would be hard, walking away from CatCo and National City for the second time.  She knew that this would happen, reading about Kara’s adventures and triumphs second or third hand and feeling left out.  The traitorous voice that used to whisper that she was already left out hardly even stirs these days, after all the times she’s repressed it.   Cat had told herself that White House Press Secretary was a job worthy to the challenge of keeping her fully distracted from what she’d left behind.  It turns out that once she’d settled into the role and started to get the hang of Beltway maneuverings the mechanics of the job were in fact less challenging than being a CEO.  She hadn’t realized how badly her schedule had been bloated by encounters with murderous, superpowered ex-employees, scheming billionaires (other than her), alien invasions and whatever crisis of the week their resident superhero had to deal with.

That said, she’s learning a lot from Olivia.  She suspects her old friend had more reasons than a desperate need to replace her decimated staff when she offered Cat the job, but Cat is so used to being on the other side of that equation that it took her an embarrassingly long time to realise she was being groomed for more.   She’s still considering what path she wants to take after her stint as press secretary wraps up.  On to communications director to put her name on some worthwhile legislation and get the experience she’d need to make a credible run for governor or the senate?  She doesn’t intend to be one of those idiots who thinks they can spend their way into an office without any accomplishments to prove she’s worthy of the task.

Some new business enterprise?  The way news gets distorted on social media has riled Cat for years, but being the WHPS has given her a new, more urgent perspective on the subject.  It’s different hearing briefings from the FBI about acts of violence set in motion by lies spread on Facebook and Tumblr.  Idle thoughts about a new type of media platform that integrates social media more directly, combined with rigorous fact checking and moderation, have been growing less idle lately.  Getting a new company off the ground at this stage of her life sounds like a nightmare, especially in a field that cutthroat, but the money from the CatCo sale and Carter’s impending college years are two significant differences from the insane and sleepless days when she was getting CatCo off the ground.

Which brings her to door number three.  A return to CatCo with the skills and knowledge she’s acquired here, using them to elevate her company further, take it to even greater heights.   Her understanding of how to leverage media influence for social change has been honed to an even sharper edge by her time in Washington – new knowledge of how the political machine works from the inside has given her some interesting thoughts about changes she’d like to make at CatCo if she went back.  The thought of it is tempting and unnerving in almost equal proportion.  Would she be moving forward or falling back into the same old rut if she went home to the city where she truly made her name?  And could she bear to see a certain bright-eyed reporter growing closer to the woman who seems to have stepped into what used to be Cat’s place in her life?  These are questions she doesn’t have answers to yet.  Until she does she’ll keep supporting and learning from Olivia –

Something in her driver’s body language catches her attention and Cat frowns, turning away from the window to reach forward and tap her on the shoulder.

“Lisa is there a -”

The whole world blurs as the car jerks to the side and Cat is thrown against the seatbelt suddenly cutting into her torso.  Force, pure force tossing her around. It’s like being a bug in a jar, picked up by the hand of a giant angry toddler and shaken hard.  Cat still remembers her first encounter with the sensation from her mercifully brief stint as a war correspondent when she’d been too close to an IED.  For years after she’d persisted in the happy delusion that that part of her life was over, until with the arrival of its own superhero National City suddenly seemed to have a new hostile alien or ridiculous metahuman attacking every damn week.  No matter how many times it happens you never get used to it.  Noise, tyres screeching, engine revving, Lisa in the front seat swearing - and then silence for a second before the sound of voices shouting and feet pounding.  Cat raises a hand to her head and tries to focus past the shock and the disorientation.  There’s an ache in her neck that makes it hard to raise her head.  Don’t stop thinking, that’s her rule in situations like this and it has always served her well.  First task?   Check on the person in the car with her, who is also the one person who might immediately be able to tell her what’s going on, or get free?  Do both.  Cat scrabbles at her seatbelt even as she calls out.

“Lisa?  Lisa can you hear me?  Lisa?”

No response.  Cat hopes she’s merely unconscious.  The crash didn’t feel as though it was that bad.  Did they have an accident or – no, there’s gunfire.  Despite the circumstances and the surge of adrenaline Cat feels a sort of tired resignation creeping over her for a second.  Does this always have to be her life?

Then the door slams open and rough hands are grapping at her shoulders, yanking her out unceremoniously to land on her hands and knees on the unforgiving tarmac.  She feels it cutting into her palms and her knees and takes a moment to be grateful that the situation isn’t triggering a flashback.   Therapy works, apparently.

Ordinarily the Press Secretary simply doesn’t rate their own secret service detail and Cat hasn’t broken the tradition.  Due to her colourful personal history (most press secretaries have never faced a single attempt on their life, let alone multiple attacks by supervillains) Cat has the distinction of being offered a detail by Olivia.  The worry was that someone with her high profile assuming such a public position might become a target in a way that the Press Secretary usually isn’t, but Cat dismissed the concern.   She doesn’t need a coterie of bodyguards to feel special - and she doesn’t believe that men and women whose job it is to take a bullet guarding the country’s leadership should be used as adornments to someone else’s ego.  Vanity is one thing, but that just smacks of insecurity to her.

And if she’s being honest with herself she couldn’t tolerate the loss of freedom, especially freedom of movement, that came with a security detail.  Evidently, that was a mistake.

There’s indistinct yelling around her as she looks up – right into the barrel of a gun, wonderful – and she catches something about ‘alien loving bitch’, oh of course, Cat thinks, the woman who named Supergirl becomes the face of the administration that passed the alien amnesty act.  It was only a matter of time before some bunch of backwoods bigots crawled out of the woodwork.  She really should have seen this coming, except she can never take these kinds of lunatics as seriously as she probably should, refuses to engage with the fearful mindset that considers them real threats.  Cadmus running around being, well, being Cadmus, also made it easy to forget that they weren’t the face of all prejudice in America and the threat didn’t end with Lillian being locked up.

Looks like she’s going to pay for that now.

The reality finally sinks in as she sees her assailant’s finger tighten on the trigger, some nondescript thug in coveralls with weaponry easily brought at any gun fair in the country.

This is it.  This is when she dies.  No lucky escape or last-minute superhero save this time.  The smallness of it stings a little.  After everything she’s survived this is how it all ends for her?

Time slows.

Cat has always known that the time gifted to us is finite and too precious to be wasted.  She’s understood so ever since she came home from school at the age of ten and found her beloved father dead in his study from a stroke decades too soon.  As a child she was furious, betrayed, she blamed everyone and everything and cried out the injustice.  As an adult she came to understand, slowly, that loss and pain are part of life, that they sharpen the edge of every experience.  Cat doesn’t fear death.  Unfinished business, on the other hand . . .

Carter.  He’s not so little nowadays, but he’ll always be her baby and he still needs his mother.  This is going to break his heart.  Will his father come through for his son this once?  If any deity should be listening, please let him grow up happier and steadier than she did.

Adam.  They’ve stayed in touch, sporadic yet ongoing.  He even sent a card for her last birthday.  She can never be the mother to him that she wanted to be, but there was hope for closeness, for something of the relationship she thought she’d lost any chance at.

Kara.  There’s a lot she still wanted to say to the most promising young woman she ever mentored.  A lot that she might never have said, regardless of what she tells herself in this last moment.  She can only hope Kara knows, that her veiled and not-so-veiled comments made it clear how important the other woman was to her, and in how many ways.  And she’s selfish enough to hope that she’ll be missed, that Kara will shed a tear or two just for Cat.

And then -

The familiar whoosh of displaced air and the distinctively heavy thump, felt as much as heard, that can only be caused by a pair of strong legs suddenly hitting the ground at speed.  There’s no stopping the smile that begins to from on her face, an ingrained reaction to the knowledge that a certain blonde Kryptonian is still her guardian angel.

Cat looks up and is startled to see a flash of dark hair instead of the expected blonde.  With a flicker of disappointment, she realises it’s him, not her, and then she has to check that assumption too as further details sink in and she realizes something very strange is happening.  Black and white is her first impression.  A black, vaguely leather looking bodysuit with a metallic sheen and a matte white cloak that sweeps back from her shoulders.  Long dark hair falling in a queue down her back.   She’s moving too fast for Cat to see more than that, as she pushes herself to her feet.

The mystery woman – mystery girl, Cat realizes - rips through the attackers with superspeed and rather less moderation than she’s used to seeing from Kara or Superman, although it doesn’t look as if her surprise savior has killed anyone.   Her shoves and throws as she blurs from one location to the next are more than forceful enough to break bones and she throws their weapons away with enough energy to put bystanders at risk.  One of the thugs gets thrown into the side of the van that rammed Cat’s car with enough force to leave an ugly dent.

She’s new, says the analytical part of Cat’s mind that never switches off, even when the rest of her is saying her final goodbyes.   Determined but short on practical experience.  Like Kara when she first started out the new arrival isn’t familiar with the million little details that add up to doing a complicated job right and she hasn’t had the benefit of anyone else’s experience.  She’s trying, but it’s clear no-one has taught her how to fight safely with her strength.

What are they going to call her, Cat wonders?  There’s no convenient letter shaped symbol on her chest to hang a name on, no obvious theme for branding.  With a jolt of realisation it occurs to her that these decisions are not hers to make anymore.  Someone else – Kara? James? Please god not Lois – will choose a name for this new arrival.  The sense of loss she feels at that realization is stronger than she might have expected.  Then Cat realizes it’s over, every attacker down, and the new superhero in town is headed towards her at a swift trot.  The expression of concern on her face is a little surprising from someone Cat has never met.

Oh hell – Lisa.  Cat rushes towards the car, a little unsteady on her Jimmy Choos but not slowing down as she heads towards the driver side door to check on Lisa.

“Ynugh!  Cat,” a hesitant pause at Cat’s lack of response, “Miss Grant!  Miss Grant are you okay?”

The voice isn’t quite the light, warm tone so familiar to her (yet another giveaway of the secret she’s supposed to keep ignoring) but it’s close. And so are those worried blue eyes.  The face though . . . there’s something about it that claws at the edge of Cat’s memory.  Something that’s obvious yet out of sight.  She pushes it into a corner of her mind for later consideration, so she can focus on the more urgent present.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, Lisa, my driver, I think she was knocked unconscious -”

Before Cat can complete the thought the girl is reaching forward and with a tearing shriek of abused metal the door is ripped away and flung aside. Lisa’s seatbelt is no obstacle to Kryptonian strength (Cat’s assuming – she’s certainly got the flight, the strength and the speed) and in the time it takes Cat to blink Lisa is being laid gently down on the road by the mystery brunette.  Cat is already shrugging out of her blazer to make an impromptu pillow while the brunette looks her over with an analytical care that Cat recognizes.  That’s a tick for x-ray vision then.

“She’s okay, she’s okay.  It’s safe, she doesn’t have any spinal damage,” the young brunette says reassuringly when she sees Cat hesitate to disturb Lisa’s head.

“It’s just bumps and bruises and a mild concussion,” she goes on as Cat tucks the folded blazer under Lisa’s head.

“I am so glad you’re okay, Miss Grant.”

“So am I, miss . . .”

Cat lets her voice trail off questioningly.  Danger past and her immediate fears assuaged her investigative instincts are kicking in.  She wants answers.  She wants the story.

She wants to know what the hell is going on.

The young woman focuses an intense gaze on Cat, before breaking into a beaming smile.  Finally, able to get a clear look at her, what stands out is how pleased she looks with herself.  Cat is reminded more than anything of Carter as a child when he thought he’d managed to sneak an extra cookie without her realizing.  He was so adorable when he did that she occasionally let him get away with it, purely for the pleasure of his happy I’m-so-clever smile.  She’s striking, no surprise ( why do superheroes always look as though they came straight from central casting?) with fine features, clear skin, long dark hair and the blue eyes Cat already took note of.  Possibly the brightness of the smile she’s directing at Cat is skewing her judgment slightly there.

“I’m a friend, Miss Grant.  I promise you that.”

Cat looks her dead in the eye and makes a show of dusting herself before planting her hands on her waist, summoning every ounce of poise she has.

“Really? Isn’t it considered friendly to introduce oneself where you’re from?”   Cat smirks a little, reminded of her earlier thought and a long past conversation with Kara.  “If you don’t provide a name you’ll have to live with someone else’s pick.”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something suitable, Miss Grant.”  More grinning.  “You’ve got some practice naming superheroes.”  She tilts her head in way that’s familiar to anyone who has spent much time around Kara, focusing elsewhere for a second.  Add another tick for super hearing, Cat decides.  “And that’s my cue to leave.  Stay safe, Cat.”

She grins wider and it’s so bright and fiercely joyful that the connection Cat had wondered at is undeniable.  Then she tenses, and Cat barely has time to take a faltering step back before the girl launches into the sky, going fast but not so fast she can’t be seen, until there’s a strange shimmer and she’s simply gone.  Cat stays watching for a moment, the way most people do when they’ve just seen one of the supers fly away, before the sound of sirens shakes her out of the reverie.

“That never stops being impressive,” she murmurs before returning to Lisa’s side, already drafting the release and considering how the administration will break the news without admitting they don’t know anything.

The next several hours are spent in the D.C headquarters of the D.E.O, recounting the same five minutes over and over, while Sam Lane pitches a hissy fit in the background.  Which explains why she’s hours behind the curve when James Olsen decides outing himself as the Guardian is a good idea.

Read the rest on AO3

#supergirl #supercat #cat grant #kara danvers #kara zor-el #fic #LJ&F #the full story is not totally friendly to lena or james #but if you think there were unexplored implications of their behavior at the end of S3 #you might like this #lena luthor #james olsen #alex danvers #lucy lane #this thing grew way out of control #but i'm committed to finishing it now

[stillgeekingout]

surprise! it’s chapter 13 of the ultimate aaron milverton crossover fic! I may have stopped my routine but I will never give up on my greatest work

previous:  1 here, 2 here, 3 here, 4 here, 5 here, 6 here, 7 here, 8 here, 9 here, 10 here, 11 here, 12 here

------

A week later, Rachel was once again visited at work. But this time, it wasn’t Aaron visiting.

“Blair? How did you-- what are you doing here?” Blair had appeared-- literally appeared-- in the middle of the store. Luckily, Rachel’s manager was in the back as usual and no other customers were around. She had believed Zoe about Blair and Alex being gods, but the teleportation still threw her off guard.

Rachel couldn’t imagine why Blair would show up out of the blue. She hadn’t gotten the impression that Blair had particularly liked her on their last encounters.

“I need to speak with you,” said Blair by way of greeting. “But first, I am going to eat some froyo.”

And with that, she began loading a cup, leaving Rachel trying and failing to think of a response. (Blair really loved froyo, according to Zoe. They had been texting constantly for a week and a lot of Zoe’s end was just stories about Alex and Blair, her coworkers, and her new friend Violet. Rachel didn’t mind. She thought it was nice how much Zoe cared about her friends.)

Blair ate her froyo in silence, filled and ate a second cup, and finally addressed Rachel. “I came to offer a proposition.”

“Ok…” She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but that wasn’t it. “What kind of proposition?”

“Well, Zoe won’t stop talking about you, and there’s all that mortal nonsense about physical distance--”

“Wait, she talks about me?” Were Alex and Blair hearing about her the way she heard about them? She hadn’t realized she would like the idea as much as she did. It felt nice to be among the people Zoe cared enough to talk about.

“When will you humans learn not to interrupt the divine when we’re speaking? Yes, I just said that she talks about you. Now, as I was saying--”

“What does she say?” She wasn’t sure what she wanted Zoe to be saying.

“You’re making me regret my proposition before I even make it.”

“Sorry, go on.”

Blair took a deep breath, eyeing Rachel as if to make sure she wouldn’t cut her off this time. “Zoe is the best human I know,” she said matter-of-factly, “and she clearly thinks highly of you. And not having you around is making her upset. My proposition is this: one of Zoe’s human friends has informed me that there is a position open at the Smithsonian, and--”

Rachel caught on to what Blair was trying to say. “Whoa, wait, I can’t move to DC!”

Blair huffed at being interrupted again. “Why not?”

“Well, my parents are here,” she said, though she had been eager to leave her parents’ house for months. “And I just met Zoe, I’m not about to Rebecca Bunch myself at her--”

“I do not know what that means.”

“It’s from a TV show.”

“Oh, one of those.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Rachel said, not wanting to anger Blair too much. Zoe had said she didn’t really lash out anymore, but Rachel didn’t want to push it. “The point is, I can’t move halfway up the country for a girl I barely know anything about.”

“Well that’s easy, I can tell you about her. What do you want to know?”

“That’s… nice of you, but not what I meant.”

“I don’t understand what the problem is. I will provide housing for you if necessary. Although I’m sure that you don’t have issues obtaining human currency, considering that you work in such an esteemed field as frozen yogurt distribution.” She gestured around at the store. Rachel laughed. Blair stared at her as if she didn’t understand the joke.

“Listen, Blair, this is really nice of you,” Rachel said, “but I just can’t. It’s too much to process right now.”

“Very well. I will return when you’ve had time to consider.”

“That’s not what I m--”

But Blair was already gone, vanished into thin air.

------

Aaron couldn’t decide what was worse: when he had been agonizing over Chad not liking him back, or his newfound agonizing over being in a long distance relationship.

That was a total lie-- as terrible as long distance was, he definitely preferred it to his previous situation. He and Chad talked constantly. They skyped every night. Aaron still got excited every time he saw Chad’s face pop up on his screen. And even though Chad was far away, he was still undisputably Aaron’s. That feeling alone was worth the pain of separation.

For all intents and purposes, he was very, very happy. But Chad’s next visit couldn’t come soon enough.

------

How was christmas shopping with violet?

Rachel sent the text, then flopped down on her bed. She and Zoe had been texting for several weeks. It was comfortable, easy. Rachel no longer felt nervous to reply to every text. She still didn’t know where she stood on the romantic front, but Zoe hadn’t mentioned anything about it. For now, it was nice having a friend to talk to.

Two friends, actually. She and Aaron had seen each other several more times. She had come close a few times to telling him the truth about everything, but it was easier just to console him about Chad. (Who, by the way, was visiting for New Year’s. Rachel got an update on the countdown every time she and Aaron talked.)

Her phone buzzed.

Suuuuuper weird lol i finally met her infamous detective friend bc we stopped by their office

???

Oh did i not tell you about that? it’s somebody she knows from college, they have like a consulting business or idk. but they kept asking me a million questions about my family and if i had any relatives my age in georgia

Weird, why?

apparently i look like some dead drug lord??? Violet has told me this before but she tells me a lot of weird stuff, i try not to ask too many questions tbh.

your roommates are gods, aren’t you beyond ruling out weird stuff lol

Blair had stopped by the store earlier that day, in fact. It was her third time, and luckily Rachel had finally convinced her to use the front door in case there were other people around.

“The position at the Smithsonian was filled,” she’d said. “But I’m still prepared to find you something.” Rachel had insisted that it was still too soon and too drastic. Blair had stuck around to eat 4 or 5 cups of froyo, and they had actually talked a little bit. It was nice, in a weird way.

I’m used to my own weird by now hahaha, Zoe’s text said. actually though sherlock did look kinda familiar to me too so probably we met at some point and now she’s mixed me up with this other girl

Wait omg sherlock???

yeah... weird name i know

no omg I think you might have met aaron’s ex

you sure??

How many people do you know named sherlock…

wtf……. small world

Did you catch a last name? I’ll fb stalk. She wondered if Aaron’s ex was cute. They seemed to have about the same taste in terrible women.

homes? i think? something like that

Sure enough, “Sherlock Holmes” was the first result on facebook. Lives in DC, went to SACU. So this was the girl who had broken Aaron’s heart. Her profile picture was hard to see, so Rachel clicked to make it bigger… and almost dropped her phone.

Her breath caught in her throat. Her hands shook. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and then looked back at her phone cautiously, hoping she had been imagining things. But no, the uncanny resemblance was still there.

“Hamlet!” she shouted to her empty bedroom. “If you’re doing this, it’s not funny, okay? Leave me alone!”

Her phone buzzed.

so, any conclusion? same sherlock?

Then, a few seconds later: omg does this mean violet and aaron went to the same college

Rachel steadied herself. She couldn’t do this right now. She couldn’t respond to Zoe like everything was normal. Since the day they met, Zoe had always been surrounded by things that reminded her of the life she was trying so hard to forget. Blair looking like Laura. Zoe driving Marci’s car. But this… this felt more deliberate than coincidental.

Hey I’ll talk to you later ok? She managed to send the text to Zoe, then put her phone down. What now? Was this Hamlet’s ghost messing with her? She wouldn’t, right? Rachel couldn’t bring herself to believe that Hamlet would intentionally hurt her.

She sat on her bed, taking deep breaths. After a few minutes with no sign of anything out of the ordinary, she picked her phone back up and called Aaron.

He answered almost immediately. “Rachel!!! What’s up?”

“Hey, are you busy?” she asked, trying to match his enthusiasm and failing miserably. “Can I ask you something weird?”

“Um...?”

“Just-- are you around people?” Her voice was shaking. “I don’t want to bring this up if you’re not in private.”

“No, I’m not around people,” he said cautiously. “Rachel, are you ok? You sound weird.”

“I think so. I mean, I’m not in danger. Um. I hate to ask you this, but can I talk to you about Sherlock?” Now he must be really confused.

“What about Sherlock? Did she try to contact you?” If Aaron sounded concerned before, now he really did.

“No! She didn’t. It’s complicated. Um, this is going to sound weird, but can you tell me what she looks like?”

“Short brown hair, glasses, really pale, kinda tall…” So the picture was probably real. Maybe she was imagining the similarities to Hamlet. A lot of people fit that description. She looked at the picture again, and-- nope, definitely still looked like a less goth Hamlet.

“And um, she lived at SACU full time, right? She didn’t like pop back and forth from Orlando?” She couldn’t imagine that her former best friend and roommate led some sort of secret double life in Middle-of-Nowhere, Georgia. But she just had to check.

“I mean, she was secretive, but I highly doubt it… hey, can you tell me what’s going on now?”

“I…” She hadn’t really thought far enough ahead to come up with an explanation. “So um. It turns out Zoe’s friends in DC know Sherlock.”

She heard Aaron sigh. “She really is going to haunt me forever, isn’t she?” he muttered.

He meant ‘haunt’ as a figure of speech, Rachel told herself. There’s no way Sherlock is ALSO a ghost. Out loud, she said, “Um, so I looked her up because I was curious and I wanted to make sure it was the same Sherlock. That’s all.” Now that she was fairly convinced that Sherlock was actually just a person who looked a lot like Hamlet, and there was nothing supernatural going on, she didn’t want to go into more detail. Maybe doppelgangers were just much more common than she previously realized. She did have a cousin who looked a lot like her.

“And what were you saying about Orlando?” Aaron asked.

“Oh, uh, nothing.” Very convincing.

“Rachel. Are you sure you’re ok?”

She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t tell Aaron, and she definitely couldn’t tell him over the phone. “I’m fine,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “I’ll explain later. It’s not a big deal.”

“Ok…”

“I promise. I’m ok. I’ll talk to you later, ok? Thanks for answering.”

“You’re welcome…” He still sounded skeptical. She hung up.  

She got on her computer and googled Sherlock Holmes, only to find out that her (their?) friend had a vlog. Because of course. She clicked through a few videos, but the similarities to Hamlet were too disturbing. Right down to the ace ring.

Knowing how much of a bad idea it was, she pulled up Hamlet’s channel. (Her therapist always told her not to watch the videos, and she usually agreed. But then, it would be much easier not to if she could just delete them. Her therapist never understood why she didn’t, and never seemed to believe that she physically couldn’t.) After two or three videos, she managed to close the tab. She lay down on her bed and cried.

That night, she dreamed of Hamlet dying in her arms.

------

Rachel’s phone rang. It was Zoe.

She let it go to voicemail.

She felt guilty for ignoring Zoe the past several days, but she didn’t know how to talk to her. With all of her secrets back to the forefront of her mind, it seemed impossible to be casual. Eventually, Zoe was bound to ask her more things about her past. Or, you know, what her last name was. Somehow or other, Rachel knew she would find the videos and see everything. Which left her with two options: tell Zoe everything before that could happen, or ignore it and hope it would go away. And she hated confrontation.

Her phone buzzed with a voicemail notification. It occurred to her that she and Zoe had never actually talked on the phone, only texted. Which meant she hadn’t heard Zoe’s actual voice since Thanksgiving weekend. She figured she should listen to the voicemail. It had to be something serious if Zoe was going to the trouble of actually calling.

“Hi, ok, so I really need you to call me. I haven’t heard from you in days and I don’t know what the explanation is but I need to know that you’re ok and you didn’t have some kind of emergency. And I really hope you’re safe and fine and you don’t have a family member in the hospital or something. Please call me if you get the chance so I know if you’re ok. Bye, I love y-- I MEAN! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, I’m so used to saying that to my mom and friends and stuff… not that we’re not friends! I just. And this is making it worse, I’m sorry, I lo--NO. Gods. Ok. Call me. Bye.”

Rachel played the message again. She felt terrible for making Zoe nervous about her wellbeing.

I got your message, she texted. Sorry I’ve been MIA. I’m ok… it’s hard to explain.

Her phone rang again. This time, she answered it.

“Hello?”

“Ok, seriously, what the hell?”

“What?” After the message she’d just heard, she hadn’t expected Zoe to sound so angry.

“You can’t just disappear off the face of the earth like that,” Zoe said. “I get that like, things happen and people get busy but you can’t go from texting every day to not saying anything for almost a week and not expect me to get worried! I’ve been freaking out!”

“I’m really sorry, I--”

“Listen, if you don’t want to talk to me anymore, can you at least have the courtesy to tell me? I’m not going to waste my time if you don’t want to be friends but it’s really not cool to just ghost me like that.” Trust me, Rachel thought, I’ve seen ghosting, and this isn’t it.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you,” Rachel said.

“Then what?” Zoe still sounded angry. “Because honestly I’ve been wracking my brain for days and if you don’t have an emergency and you’re not avoiding me then I’m really confused as to why you can’t just respond to a simple text, even to say you’re too busy to talk.”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Rachel said. She should have known confrontation would come for her one way or another. “I’m… I’m not exactly what you think I am, Zoe.”

“My best friends are gods,” Zoe said. “Try me.”

Rachel sighed. “I wasn’t being totally honest about being ok,” she said. “I mean, I’m fine, I’m safe, I don’t want you to worry about me. But I have these... ghosts, I guess. Of my past. And sometimes it’s too much.”

“Rachel, I’m here for you,” Zoe said, no longer sounding angry. “We’re friends now, ok? You can tell me.”

“That’s the thing, I really can’t tell you.” Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe Zoe would understand anyway.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… ok, so some things happened in my life that… really kind of messed me up. And it was really bad for a long time. I’m mostly fine now, but sometimes I just get reminded and that’s what happened the other day and I just… I couldn’t…” She trailed off.

“Hey, if you’re dealing with something, you can just tell me that, okay? You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong. I’m here for you either way.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said. “I’m just not ready to talk about it yet. Maybe someday I’ll tell you.”

“In the meantime, tell those ghosts I said to leave you alone,” Zoe said. It took Rachel a second to remember she had used ghosts as a metaphor. “And if you need space, I’m cool with that too. But do me a favor and tell me that next time, ok?”

“Ok. Sorry I worried you.”

“I’m just glad you’re ok,” Zoe said. “And that you still want to be my friend.”

“Of course I do!” Rachel said. “You and Aaron are the first people in a long time I feel comfortable being friends with.”

Zoe laughed. “Wow, so glad to be in an exclusive club with Aaron,” she said.

“Seriously! He’s a great guy,” Rachel said. “Over the top, sure, but really genuine.”

“Oh, speaking of Aaron, did you ever find out if--”

“Hey!” Rachel cut her off. “Um. Remember the thing I said before, about not being able to explain? That again, but can we not talk about Sherlock? I don’t know how to tell you why, but I just really don’t want to.”

“Okay…” Zoe sounded confused. Of course she did. Nothing Rachel was saying made sense.

“Oh and hey, Zoe?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for reaching out to me,” Rachel said. “That was a really thoughtful voicemail, and um, I know you said it on accident but I think it’s perfectly fine to tell your friends you love them.”

“Oh my gods,” Zoe groaned. “That was so embarrassing…”

“No, I thought it was sweet!”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“I’m not. It means a lot to me,” Rachel insisted.

“Well um. You’re welcome, I guess.” There was a long moment of silence, then Zoe broke it. “So um, do you mind hearing a story about Violet? Will that bother you?”

“I would love to hear a story about Violet,” Rachel said. Zoe was so considerate. Why had Rachel been nervous to talk to her again?

Zoe launched into her story, and Rachel forgot everything she had been worried about. She forgot all the trouble about a potential relationship and her past and Blair coming to pester her about moving and just thought about Zoe, and how nice it was to have a supportive friend to talk to and to hear stories from.

“...so now she’s got a whole group of people convinced, and I don’t even know how to start undoing all that damage,” Zoe wrapped up. “Blair thinks it’s hilarious, though, so at least that.”

“That’s great,” Rachel said. “Um, I should go actually. I think my parents wanted to go out to dinner or something.”

“Ok,” Zoe said. “Well it was nice actually talking to you.”

“Yeah! We should do it again. At some point. If you want.”

“I’d like that.” She could hear Zoe smiling through the phone.

“Well, goodnight. I love you.”

“Oh my gods, stop it,” Zoe said. “I’m never living that down, am I?”

Rachel had said it as a joke, but she realized that no matter how she felt about romance or relationships or long distance or whatever else, she did love having Zoe as a person in her life. And that had to be enough justification, right? But she didn’t say any of that-- because she had a feeling, or maybe a hope, that Zoe already knew. Instead she just said, “Nope!”

“Love you too,” Zoe said, as if to confirm everything Rachel hadn’t said. “Bye.” She hung up.

With just one phone call, Rachel felt that warm feeling again. Like she did at the Goodwill buying the jackets. And in the back of Zoe’s van on the way to Miami. And on the beach at sunrise.

For a second, she almost considered Blair’s proposition.

------

The next time Blair showed up at the store, she didn’t even ask about Rachel moving. She just went straight for froyo and conversation. Rachel had a sneaking suspicion that Blair was actually starting to like talking to her. (She did know a lot about mythology, even if a lot of that came from Percy Jackson.)

“So Blair,” Rachel said, after they had been talking for a little while. “You’re like an all powerful goddess, right?”

Blair narrowed her eyes. “Of course…”

“How much control do all-powerful goddesses have over the internet?”

“That’s absurd. As much as we want.”

“I wasn’t doubting you!” Rachel assured her. “Just asking.”

“Well, are you ‘just asking’ for your own amusement, or did you need something from me?” Blair looked at her expectantly. Rachel took a deep breath. The idea had come to her suddenly, and she thought it just might work. A way to get one step farther away from her past.

“Do you think you could delete some videos for me?”

#tajwash #ohhey tajwash is actually semi more relevant in this one lol #hamdam #blairgp #I am committed to finishing this dang fic if it kills me #I'm actually quite pleased with this chapter even though I've gone totally out the window with my schedule #mine

[dusty-cookie]

Through The Valley - Chapter 10

Fic Summary: A deeper look into The Sanctuary.

Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. Boy has a weird obsession with a baseball bat, promiscuity and the word “fuck”. Girl has to find out if she can look past these things. Also, zombies and shit.

AO3 Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10075958/chapters/25085109

Tags: @rickdixonandthefandomlifeposts @embracetheapocalypsewithme @redisunamused @kinkozan @lupienne @theblack-wolf @lovingzombiechaos @dragonracer @miiraal

Pairing: Negan X OFC

Chapter Summary:  Snow Days

(Chapter 10 whaaaat??? Thanks to those people that keep reading this and I hope you enjoy this chapter)

Word Count: 4802

Negan walked into the hall with a spring in his step and a smile on his face. His mood was exceptionally good this morning. The wives had convinced him to join them for breakfast and it had been an unusually pleasant affair, with barely any bitching going on. Instead, they had all been flirtatious and attentive and it had resulted in a memorable foursome, with him fucking Valerie from behind, while Valerie was eating out Becky, while Tara sat on Becky’s face.

With breakfast long over, the cafeteria was almost empty and he scanned the hall for the one thing that could make his morning even more enjoyable. He found her in her usual spot on one of the sofas in the recreational area, closest to the small wood-burning stove that they had set up and running to provide some more warmth during the winter.

She was deep in thought over some papers in her lap, her facial expressions and movements ranging from frowning, to biting her lower lip to chewing on the pencil in her right hand. The latter was a rather disgusting habit of hers, but it was the entire scope of her mannerisms, right down to the thick green socks on her feet that were nearly falling apart and which she refused to throw away, that made Lilly, Lilly.

Negan realized that he had been staring at her and shook his head to pull his mind away from her lips and her feet to approach the object of his musings and plop down next to her.

“Morning sugartits.”

“Morning fancy-face.”

He chuckled and leaned closer to her to see what she was working on. The stupid nicknames had become a daily ritual, with an unspoken competition between the two of them who could come up with the silliest moniker. Lilly had come close to winning the morning before, when she had answered his “Morning sweetcheeks,” with a grin and a “Morning candy dick,” that had nearly caused him to spit out his coffee.

“Why the fuck are you doing points? I thought Laura finished the lists last night.”

“Yeah, but some of them didn’t add up this morning, so I told her I’d have a look at them.”

Negan sighed and rolled his eyes. Sometimes he felt like he was surrounded by idiots. It was a good thing that his newest lieutenant was so anal about the points and inventory lists.

“Did you see that shit outside?” He put his arm on the headrest behind her in hopes of getting her attention, since she had yet to look up from her papers. Lilly seemed unable to tear her gaze away from them, though.

“If by ‘shit’ you mean ‘snow’, then yes. It was kind of hard to miss when I looked out of the window first thing this morning. I already made snow angels with the kids.”

“Pfff… fucking snow just means more fucking work clearing paths around Sanctuary.”

“It also means frozen walkers. And fun. Don’t worry, I sent out a team to do some shoveling.”

He grinned to himself while he watched her correcting the last couple of pages. In the few short months that Lilly had been at Sanctuary, she had fast become one of the most productive members of his community. She was already sharing responsibilities with Dwight when it came to organizing scavenging runs, while showing no hesitation of going out there herself to get her hands dirty. She also had a knack for keeping some of the weight off Negan’s back when it came to the more tedious tasks of leading a group, like assigning snow shoveling duty to a bunch of lazy fucks and dealing with their resulting complaints.

“Thanks babe. I might just be able to retire soon if you keep doing my work,” he stated half-jokingly. She usually got testy whenever he made quips about her taking over Sanctuary and was very vocal about having no leadership ambitions, but he could not help himself from testing the waters from time to time. Sure enough, she finally looked up from the lists with a raised eyebrow.

“No rest for the wicked, Your Highness. Here, these should be in order now.” She handed him the points lists so he could use them for commissary this week. He folded them and threw them on the coffee table.

“So… snow angels? Why would you willingly go out there in the freezing fucking cold?”

“I love snow. It reminds me of home.”

“And what’s home?”

“Michigan. Halfway between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan to be exact. We used to have some spectacular winters when I was young.”

“You never told me you’re from fucking Michigan.”

“You never asked.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He suddenly became painfully aware of the fact that he didn’t know anything about Lilly from before the world went to shit. That was something that needed to be amended.

“So how the fuck did you end up in bumfuck Maryland?”

“Got into Johns Hopkins, got a job in Annapolis after finishing my degree, tried to get to DC when the dead started walking. You know the rest of the story.”

“Annapolis, huh? I used to visit the beach at Sandy Point from time to time. Just my fucking luck that I never ran into your sexy ass.” He was also intimately familiar with the hospital there, but he kept that to himself.

“Sandy Point is nice. Crowded, though. Well, not anymore I guess. Where are you from, then?”

“Crofton, born and raised. Most boring fucking place on earth.”

“Aww, poor Negan. And what did you do there besides being bored?”

“Being the best fucking middle school gym teacher in the whole fucking county.”

“Seriously? You were a teacher?”

“Yeah yeah, I know. How can a bad motherfucker like me be allowed to teach kids…”

“No, I’m sure you made an awesome teacher. It’s just that I used to be one, too. I taught at St. John’s.”

“Oooooh… look at the fancy fucking college professor. I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of fetish to be explored here somewhere.” He winked at her and she laughed. He would have loved to elaborate on this particular topic, but they were interrupted by the arrival of Jax, Dwight, Connor, Gavin and Andrei. He was one of the scouts that commuted between the outposts and took their motorcycles into cities to look for potential places to scavenge. He also had the annoying habit of making moves on Lilly whenever he spent time at Sanctuary.

“Hello lovely.”

“Morning Andrei,” she smiled at him, “Did you have any problems getting here in this kind of weather?”

He took off his gloves and sat on the armrest right next to Lilly with a cocky grin on his face.

“Nah. A real biker doesn’t care about a little snow.”

“Jax and Gavin need some practice on the bikes,” Dwight addressed Negan.

“How good are we on gas?” Negan did not like the idea of them wasting fuel just so they could frolic in the snow.

“We’ve got more than enough. The weather isn’t so bad yet and all the dead are frozen, so the noise won’t be a problem.”

“Fine. Get the fuck out of here, then. Only for an hour, though.”

“You wanna join us darling? I can show you how to ride,” Andrei asked suggestively.

“Fuck no! No way am I going to get on one of those hell beasts.” Negan’s mood got even better. Lilly turned to look at Jax next and raised her index finger at him, “And if I see you without a helmet out there I’m going to whoop your ass.”

“Yes, mom,” Jax chuckled and the group of men made their way to the Sanctuary’s front doors.

Lilly stretched her legs and put her feet up on the coffee table, her head falling back against the headrest and his forearm. He damned the cold weather even more now, forcing him to wear his leather jacket and not being able to feel her hair on his skin. She stared at her feet and it seemed like she took a particular interest at the holes in her woolen socks. The blank face told him that she had one of her brain resets, though. He couldn’t blame her, really. Between correcting points, entertaining the children and assigning daily duties, her day had already been pretty busy and it wasn’t even noon yet. He almost felt bad that all he done so far was getting his dick wet.

“So you’re afraid of fucking motorcycles?” He tried to engage her again, “And here I thought you weren't scared of anything.” He wrapped a strand of her black hair around his finger and tugged lightly to bring her back to reality. She wiggled her toes and looked up at him.

“I’m afraid of lots of things. Motorcycles, bears, heights, werewolves…”

He laughed at that. “Good fucking thing you only have to deal with fucking zombies.”

“True. What are you afraid of?”

Large dogs. Loss of control. Hospitals…

“Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Told you I’m a bad motherfucker.”

“Uh-huh. And I’m Santa. By the way, I should probably go take a look how the snow shoveling is coming along.”

“No, I’ll go. You take the rest of the day off and catch up on some fucking sleep or knitting or rubbing one out while thinking of me.” He winked at her and stood up. She craned her neck to give him a smile and he tried to convince himself that this one was much more genuine than what she had showed Andrei earlier.

“Thanks boss. I owe you one.” That was kind of ironic, considering she had kept the Sanctuary up and running during his short absence this morning.

“Heh, yeah. Better not fucking go there babe. See you later.” He turned to go look for the snow crew before his big mouth told her exactly what she could do to make it up to him.

The following couple of weeks were slow and dark and cold. The weather had been relatively stable so far, but right after New Year’s, a massive blizzard hit the area and the Sanctuary was wrapped in a blanket of snow and ice. All scavenging was put on hold since they only had one army truck equipped for this kind of weather. Negan was once more proud of his foresight. Inventory was still full with rice that would last them through the rest of the winter and he had made sure back in the fall that enough trees around Sanctuary were cut down so they could keep the furnace in the hall and the stoves in the dormitory and the single rooms burning throughout the next couple of weeks.

His Saviors were in hibernation. Most slept a lot, others socialized more than usual and it only took him two times of threatening people with the hot iron until the occasional fights ceased completely. Or at least, people made sure he wasn’t around when tempers flared too high.

Lilly’s room had become sort of a refuge for him and some others, like Jax, Connor, Seth, Paula and Laura. It was one of the biggest rooms on the third floor, where the lieutenants lived and she wasn’t sharing it with anyone. With the Tower rec room pretty much abandoned and the hall packed with people at all times, the long winter nights were spent playing cards on her bed and passing around the occasional bottle of booze to keep their insides warm.

This morning after breakfast they had once more migrated to Lilly’s place. Connor and Seth were engaged in a battle of chess, while Negan got comfortable on Lilly’s bed, playing cards with Jax and the girls.

“Negan, any fours?”

“Go fucking fish! You have to take off your shirt now.”

“For the last time, we’re not playing strip Go Fish!”

“I’m your boss, you gotta do as I say.” This statement and his pouting earned him a couple of chuckles from the others.

“Can you imagine having someone like that as a leader?” Laura asked while rearranging her cards.

“It sucks, trust me,” Jax answered ominously and Lilly was quick to change the topic:

“Yeah, we’re lucky we ended up here. At least this one doesn’t have shit for brains.”

“Oh please. It was my awesome fucking charm and personality that convinced you to come with us. Not to mention my panty-combusting good looks.” Negan winked at Lilly.

“Your looks? No. It was Lucille that caught my attention,” she said while picking up the bat from its spot against the bedframe and twirling it in her hand, “All soft curves and sharp edges…,” she continued while stroking her thumb over the wood and watching the light reflect from the barbed wire.

“Holy fucking shit woman! Do you want me to nut in front of all these people?”

“Now that's a challenge if I ever heard one,” Lilly grinned and set Lucille back out of sight.

“Jesus fucking Christ, get a room you two!” Seth exclaimed from his spot at the small table by the window.

“We are in a fucking room, dipshit.”

“Yeah. And it’s MY room, and I can do all the nutting I want in here.”

Negan broke into a booming laugh and was just about to comment on Lilly’s ability to make people orgasm, when a knock on her door made everyone look up. Without waiting for an invitation, the door opened to reveal Carson, who looked even more timid than usual.

“Sir, we’ve got a problem.”

“What the fuck is it now? Is Dwight complaining about the Tower rec room again? I told him it’s his fucking responsibility to heat it if he insists on spending his free time there.”

“No, Sir. It’s… it’s the rice. The kitchen crew wanted to start preparing lunch and dinner and they discovered that it’s spoiled. I think it’s some kind of fungus. We opened all the rice sacks and there’s only two or three of them that doesn’t have mold in them.” Carson looked close to crying and he flinched when Negan jumped up from the bed and his lieutenants followed suit.

“Are you absolutely fucking sure that all the food has gone bad? How the fuck did this happen?” he asked in an increasingly louder voice. This couldn’t be happening. Maybe they all didn’t know shit about rice. Maybe it was just some bugs. They could still eat rice with some bugs in it, right?

“It might be the weather,” Connor offered as an explanation, even if it was far from helpful at the moment, “The storage room can get damp, but it’s not cold enough in there to freeze the food.”

“And why the fuck has nobody fucking thought about this before we put the motherfucking rice in there?” Negan yelled before he felt a hand on his arm. Lilly looked up at him with concern in her eyes, but she tried to diffuse the situation.

“Don’t panic yet. Let’s go down there and have a look. There might have been a mistake.”

He wiped a hand over his face, concentrating hard on not letting anyone see that he was shaking.

“Yeah… yes, you’re right. Let’s see if there’s been a mistake.”

There wasn’t.

A light blanket of gray fur covered the topmost layer of rice inside every sack they looked into. Negan did not lose any time and called for a meeting with his lieutenants. He had to get busy to keep himself from freaking out. Dwight and Lilly were tasked with finding a way to get supplies. Negan told them to go every route they could take with the army truck, whether it be the other communities, hunting, or scavenging, preferably further South along the coast. He ordered the scouts to try to get to the outposts and tell them that Hilltop and the Kingdom had to give up half of their supplies now, as long as it didn’t leave them starving. The rest of his lieutenants were told to organize food rationing and to make sure people wouldn’t panic.

His own panic was an entirely different problem. How could he have been so stupid as to solely rely on the rice? Dwight and Lilly did their best while going out with their teams, but the weather got even worse, with snow storms being an almost daily occurrence now. Lilly tried to go hunting once, but came back nearly frozen to death. While wrapping two wool blankets around her shivering body on the rec room sofa, Negan told her he would use the handcuffs from their first night together and tie her to her bed if she ever snuck out again.

The first week after the mold discovery, they managed to keep the news from people at Sanctuary, but after the tenth day without rice and with decreasing portion sizes, rumors began to spread and the Saviors started to get nervous.

A group of people were standing in Negan’s office, demanding to know what was going on, while he summoned his biggest inner asshole and told them to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out. No one would starve, not while he was leader, but he only told that to himself, repeating it in his mind over and over again.

He had just managed to either threaten or calm down the mob enough so they would leave, when there was another knock on his door and Lilly walked in. He was grateful for the distraction, even if he would have preferred for her to be able to go outside scavenging. The way she was nervously chewing on her lower lip and how she twisted her hands in front of her made his stomach sink. She sat down on the edge of the chair in front of his desk instead of assuming her usual relaxed posture.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“The only thing I can deal with right now is for you to ask me to fuck you on this desk,” he joked, but he already knew it had to be something important if she came to him instead of trying to deal with it on her own.

“Negan…,” she pleaded, clearly not in the mood for their usual flirtatious banter.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “Alright, what the fuck is it this time?”

“I think I have a solution to our problem,” she said while holding out her palm to him. In her hand was a small key, of the kind you would use for a padlock. Negan took it and stared at it for a couple of seconds, before raising his eyebrows in her direction to show her that he was waiting for an explanation.

“There’s a shed, not far from where you found me and Jax. It’s filled with food cans and rice,  stored in airtight plastic containers and with packs of silica gel to control moisture. It should be enough to get us through the next couple of weeks until the weather lets up. It will take a while for us to get there with the truck, but if we leave today…”

Negan didn’t let her finish. He slammed his hand with the key on his desk and she flinched.

“Are you fucking telling me…,” his voice was dangerously low, “that you kept a whole fuck-ton of fucking food from me? From us?” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. Rage had started to boil hot in his belly and he forced himself to stare at the treacherous key on his desk, instead of looking into those green eyes of hers that had only ever given him positive emotions so far.

“I’m so sorry Negan…,” she whispered and he could hear the tears in her eyes, “It was my backup in case things didn’t work out here.”

He got up so violently that his chair crashed into the wall behind him.

“Your backup, huh? Your fucking backup? You fucking lied to me, Lilly. I remember asking you if we had taken everything…”

“And you had! I told you we had taken everything useful from the house…”

“Fuck you Lilly! For motherfucking fuck’s sake!” He spun around to tower over her. She had the sense not to continue her train of thought. He could see through the red veil of anger that she looked miserable; guilty and scared.

“We’ve been talking about people starving to fucking death. There are fucking kids in here that go hungry. And you’re only telling me about this shit now?”

“I thought we’d manage…”

“Well we clearly fucking don’t, Lil. You fucking lied to me. You kept this shit from me because of your stupid fucking paranoias. Because you always fucking need a backup of a backup of a fucking backup.”

“You know why I am like that.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck if your former leaders gave you fucking issues. When have I ever given you any fucking reason not to trust me?” Apart from the obvious problem of her keeping food from his people, that was the other reason for his rage. That she didn’t trust him.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Negan,” she sounded like a broken record now and he didn’t care about her excuses, “I’m going to get Dwight and maybe Laura and Gavin and we’ll leave within the hour.”

“Oh no. You’re not going any-fucking-where. In fact, you’re fucking forbidden from leaving the fucking Tower for at least a month.”

“You’re grounding me?” The threat had brought back some of her fighting spirits. To anyone else, this would have been a relatively mild punishment, but Negan knew how much she valued her hunting and scavenging privileges, not to mention the laps she ran around Sanctuary every other day to keep healthy.

“You bet your fucking ass I am. You behave like some fucking teenage girl keeping secrets from her parents, you get treated like one. Jax is going to take Dwight to that shed.”

That made her jump up.

“No! Negan, you know Jax isn’t as capable as others out there.”

“I don’t fucking care. He knew about that food, too, right? This is his punishment as well as yours for not telling me about it. Now stop fucking arguing and get the fuck out before I think of something else, like demoting you, or throwing both your asses out into the fucking cold.”

For a moment she looked as if she wanted to continue fighting with him about it. Her chest was heaving and there were fresh tears in her eyes, but this time, they seemed to come from anger instead of guilt and fear. Negan’s jaw was set in a hard line and he put his hands on his hips, as if to challenge her. He almost wanted her to keep arguing so he could take his anger out on her some more. After a moment, she seemed to deflate in front of him and turned around to leave.

When she reached the door, she faced him again. “I really am sorry, Negan. You’re right. I should have trusted you more, instead of endangering everyone. I hope I can make it up to you.”

Her steps echoed through the hallway until he was left with silence and the hopes that the truck would get through to the place where she had stored the food. It would mean that they would survive this winter and Negan swore to himself that he would never rely on only one food source ever again.

It took Dwight, Jax and Gavin two days to collect the stuff from the shed and get back to Sanctuary. The rice was blessedly unspoiled and Negan wasn’t the only one who claimed to have developed an irrational distaste for it. They all kept eating it, of course, but he made a mental note about getting Marv and his crew to build those greenhouses and to look into potential fields to grow crops come spring. He also declared that the other communities would have to keep up with providing them with half their supplies. Anything to keep the risk of facing such a catastrophe again at a minimum.

Fortunately, as January ended, so did the snowfall. People were able to work outside again and the depleted supplies were restocked by his scavengers and by March, everything seemed to be back to normal, the Sanctuary standing tall and proud in the first rays of an increasingly stronger spring sun. Negan should have been elated that they had come out of their first bad winter unscathed, but the truth was that he was miserable.

While Lilly was allowed outside again, he still had not given her her responsibilities back and she had yet to be assigned to a scavenging run. Negan was still seething about her lack of trust and foresight and she seemed to react to his ongoing punishment with icy cold glares and that was only when she wasn’t avoiding him as much as possible. He had kept her slip-up a secret from the other Saviors so as not to add insult to injury for her. However, he couldn’t help but think that grounding her had been just as much punishment for himself as it had been for her.

He missed her. He missed her easy smile and her flirty wit and the way she had never shied away from touching his arm, or his side when she poked him, even if it had never gone any further than that. Instead, she kept ignoring him and the fact that she had become increasingly bitchy with pretty much everyone else didn’t console him one bit. He had caught himself smelling the red scarf she had given him on more than one occasion, even with her scent being almost gone from it.

Her bad mood kept coming up as a topic of conversation between his other lieutenants and he couldn’t blame them. One morning after breakfast, she walked up to their table to ask Seth for the points list to check something, doing her best to look anywhere but at Negan.

“Sorry Lil, I haven’t finished them yet. I can bring them to you this afternoon if you want.”

“Don’t fucking bother! I need them now. Why can’t any of you ever do their fucking jobs?” She ranted and the people around Negan gasped. Seth stared at her slack-jawed. He had always been friendly with her.

“Calm down! Jeez Lil, what the fuck is the matter with you? You on the rag or something?” Seth asked, clearly shocked at her outburst.

“Fuck you, Seth!” Lilly growled, her face a mixture of rage and sadness, before she turned on her heels and stomped back to the stairs and up into the Tower.

“What the hell? What was that all about?” Seth and the others broke out into incredulous whispers.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Negan declared before standing up to leave for his office. He didn’t want to be around while his lieutenants kept speculating about the source of Lilly’s abysmal mood. Although he silently agreed that her reaction had been extreme and more than just a little out of character.

He spent the rest of the morning pouring over schedules, inventory lists and scavenging plans and it all made him even more acutely aware of Lilly’s physical and mental absence. He really could have used her help in all of this. His pride forbade him from making up with her just yet, though, even if his callous comments added even more fuel to the ever burning rumor mill at Sanctuary.

He was just about ready to throw the papers that were scattered all over his desk to the ground in one sweep of his arm, when a knock on his office door distracted him from his ever-growing frustrations. He called for the person on the other side to come in, thinking maybe it was Dwight with another list of stuff people needed, or maybe a wife to complain about the lack of makeup in inventory. He was therefore surprised when it was Lilly who walked into the room. He briefly debated whether he should feel happy or annoyed about her turning up. He settled for happy, only to turn to concerned when he finally got the first chance in weeks to properly look at her. She was ridiculously pale, her skin carrying a green tinge and a thin layer of sweat was visible above her white lips. Something was very clearly wrong and he felt the strong urge to walk around his desk to help her sit down and to cover her with his jacket.

“Negan, I… I need to talk to you.”

#negan #comic negan #comicnegan> #comicnegan #negan fanfic #negan fanfiction #negan x oc #negan x ofc #The Walking Dead #twd #the walking dead fanfiction #twd fanfiction #here's negan #through the valley

[jadeile-writes]

Fanfic Progress Update 128

Hi hi hi<3 Stay tuned for a spoilery glimpse into the next chapter of Adventure Gone Mini at the end.

Current WIPs:

Adventure gone Mini

Fandom: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild / The Minish Cap

Summary: Sidon is given his very own Sheikah Slate, the first replica Purah has managed to make, and sets out to travel with Link with the intention of registering warp points for convenient travel in the future. However, when a malfunction shrinks them down to the size of bugs, and they meet little people called the Minish, they have to change their plans from “fun adventuring” to “getting out of this mess”. Not that those two have to exclude one another. Link/Sidon.

Progress: Chapter 54 is the current latest chapter and was posted on 21st of July. Chapter 55 is half done, cause I doubled my writing hour this week to catch up on the lost time! : D The scheduled posting date shall be 18th of August.

I post a new chapter every three weeks on Wednesdays, except when I don’t manage to and move it by a week. These updates always include a sneak-peek for the next chapter, slowly getting longer over the three (or four) weeks’ waiting period.

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Hah! Our afterlife is the most hilarious bushwa, dearest

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel

Summary: This is not a stand-alone story! This is a oneshot/drabble collection in the universe as “Shit, the Radio Demon is a part of my afterlife”. Read the main story before bothering with this one.

I decided to give my readers a chance to throw Radiohusk prompts at me, and had the Afterlife-verse as an option to set the stories in. Everyone liked that, so this fic is now a thing. Enjoy the extra mischief from these two dorks!

Progress: Chapter 28 is the current latest chapter and was posted on 27th of November. Chapter 29 is technically written, but I’ll need to look it over to see if I want to tweak it before I can call it done. The scheduled posting date is Some Friday, and there will be a sneak-peek on the Previous Thursday. Chapter 30 is half-done as well.

Note to new people who might be looking at this: I’m not taking prompts anymore. These will be the last chapters, and then the fic will be done.

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Other WIPs I’m not currently working on but intend to get back to someday:

PoE Drabbles (Pillars of Eternity) (btw, I’ve gotten back to playing the game, so this’ll likely be back on the table soon)

DC Drabbles (Justice League)

Diaphanous Relations (Forgotten Realms, R.A. Salvatore’s books)

Revalink chapter fic (Zelda BotW)

A bunch of Hazbin oneshots and chapter fics, some started, some just on the idea phase. There’s… there’s a lot…

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That’s it for the WIPs! Here’s the promised sneak-peek into Adventure gone Mini (Note: the text may end up slightly different in the fic itself due to more editing happening before publishing). Enjoy!

Mini

Link sat cross-legged on the stone floor of the Minish sized shrine. The entrance was a large stone door that could be opened with a Sheikah Slate, and the interierior so far was an expertly carved and elaborately decorated tunnel with Fire Chuchu jelly lanterns on the sides. It was distinctly lacking the mystical floating rock slabs of the regular shrines, which meant the entire dungeon was on ground level, which in turn made sense considering how little space a Minish shrine logically took. His slate had gained a blacked outline of a map upon entering the shrine, so he assumed that his first job would be to find a map-granting altar somewhere nearby. ...Should he be exploring, that is, which he wasn’t going to be able to do on this trip. Damn it.

Slateri had nabbed a Fire Chuchu jelly from one of the lanterns and was boiling a pot of water with some sort of medicine mixed in, planning to fix Link’s coughing with it. If Link got to go through the inevitable tussle with the Vaatians cough-free, he swore he’d be a lot less sour about Slateri’s bossy attitude in return.

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That’s it this time. See you next Saturday!

Links:

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#Fanfic progress update