Writing Ideas

Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.

MANY religions worldwide would consider this a solemn and respected post of work. Every form of paganism I have personally run across would say you’re doing an important duty. In Judaism, we’d say you’re fulfilling a Mitzvah by respecting the dead and honoring their memories.

Katara and Zuko get on Aang, Aunt Wu and Sokka’s nerves with HOW MUCH they keep going to her.

Katara: She said my lover's going to be a strong bender👉👈

Zuko: Mine is apparently someone super smart😳👀. Also I'm supposed to eat papaya for safety.

Katara: SAME!!!

The zukka spin on it is Sokka absolutely does not buy it, but also he wants to know what Zuko’s love life prediction is for tooootally no reason at all(he's trying to fit into the descriptor). Also Zuko’s kinda worried about Sokka after his reading and is trying to very subtly(and failing) to keep him from dying.

Sokka: I'm going with Aang to the giant volcano to prove that the loser over there risked nothing for the panda lily

so then one day the library does a reading challenge to see who can read the most books in a month where the winner gets a “secret private tour of the library” and of course Sokka wins (bc like I said menace to society) but he’s like, “I want HIM to show me around” and he points to Zuko in his little black turtleneck looking rather terrified, and the other staff members are like, well ya gotta do it I guess…

so Zuko shows him around the library, that’s probably like a gazillion years old (maybe more) with all its nooks and crannies and possible ghost stories and sightings and Sokka is SO into it bc he’s a nerd but also because the way Zuko passionately talks about the library is like.. so hot.

and they finish the tour and Sokka’s like, this can’t be it so he panics and is like DO YOU WANNA JOIN MY BOOK CLUB???

and Zuko is like.. uh yeah sure I love book clubs (and cute stupid guys)

but the thing IS is that Sokka doesn’t actually HAVE a book club so he recruits the gaang to come over to his house to stage a book club and they do it bc they’re good friends (begin the chaos of crash coursing the gaang through like wuthering heights or something) and when they all leave sokka and zuko end up staying behind to talk about books and be nerds and maybe kiss a little

And then a couple minutes later I still had hiccups and she walked by on her way out and she said "I wasn't going to scare you you know" and I said "you weren't?" and she said "no -- I have a way I can cure hiccups" and I was like "well what is it?" she's like "theres something about me that when I talk to people their hiccups just go away. i just chat or maybe tell them a story and after a minute or so their hiccups are just gone" and I thought she was like definitely on some pseudoscience shit so i kind of laughed and joked like "you should expect a call from the X-Men soon then" and she said "no. For real. I bet your hiccups are gone now aren't they?" and sure enough my fucking hiccups were gone. They stopped while she was speaking to me and didn't come back all night

Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks.  Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that?  In the computer core, or the communications hub?  You just lose power.  And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.

If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.

It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost.  Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.

Most fleets give you something, of course.  For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass.  I looked at the vial.

“It’s too soon,” Traav said.

Kvala gestured negation, shakily.  She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now.  Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive.  “You know we’re losing the war.”

They couldn’t deny that.  “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”

“Doesn’t it?  The Chreee have better technology.  Better resources.  And they have their warrior code.  They don’t care if they die.”

“We can’t give up!” Traav protested.  They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told.  “Any heartbeat now—”

There was a clunk.  Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.

“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.

Kvala exchanged glances with me.  The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors.  What was the point, after all?

The Aushkune did.

There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here.  They were supposed to hide in nebulas.

But if there were—

If there were, we were too late.  The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—

Footsteps.

Bipedal.  The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.

And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it.  My first thought was, robot?  That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . .  But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.

Who wore suits?

“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala.  “Urgent treatment.  Evacuation.”

“Who are you?”  Kvala struggled upright.

Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners.  “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain.  Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.

“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?”  Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.

“Not Chreee,” the sound system said.  “You Man.  Soil Starship Nichols.”  The being hesitated.  “Rescue Chreee as well.  On ship.  Will separate.”

“You what?” I said faintly.  Who would do that?

“Oath,” the being explained.

“What kind of oath?  To what deity?”

The shoulders of the being moved up and down.  “Several different.  Also none.  For me, none.  Just—oath.”

I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was.  I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.

The being scanned me.  “Have water,” it said.  “Recommend.”

Raithari have fast metabolisms.  I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.

“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”

“Raithari to Raithar.  Chreee to Chreeeholm.”

“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.

The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad.  Sometimes lie.”

We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?

“And you—what?” I asked.  “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”

The being seemed to consider this.  “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.

Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense.  Did it worship soil?  But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .

Madness.

On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it.  So why not embrace madness and see what happened?

“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.

“Yes.  Soil Starship Nichols.”

angel: HI, I HAVE BEEN ALIVE SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME AND I NOTICED YOU ARE ALSO SOMEWHAT OLD?

vampire: ...sure. hey what was the dawn of time like?

angel: PRETTY BORING ACTUALLY. NOTHING ELSE EXISTED YET.

angel: YOU'VE JUST BEEN STANDING THERE? FOR HOW LONG?

vampire: uhhhhhhh a mere speck in comparison to our immortal lives so don't worry about it honestly. i need you to invite me in though.

angel: OF COURSE, I'M SO SORRY. PLEASE COME IN.

vampire: *steps over the threshold and immediately starts hissing and coughing like a cat with a bad hairball*

angel: OH, I'M SO SORRY. MY APARTMENT IS CONSIDERED HOLY GROUND BECAUSE I LIVE IN IT. I SHOULD HAVE WARNED YOU.

old instruments get played all the time and this is a normal thing

she's literally a professional flute player

fuck james madison, it fucking rules that a black woman got to play his stupid fancy flute

it's NOT like the kim k marilyn dress thing. kim k paid to wear a historical item that was custom fit to a particular individual's body and damaged it, as anyone who knows about textile preservation who saw that going down KNEW was going to happen

i trust the motherfucking library of congress with loans of its holdings more than i do the goddamn ripley's believe it or not museum of hollywood are you shitting me

He’s since been open about the emotional difficulty of having written the song since many people now message him on October 1st to ‘wake him up’ despite the song being a memorial to his departed father.

Clark and Diana know Nightwing = first Robin = Dick Grayson, and Barry knows Dick as Wally's friend, the first Robin as Wally's old teammate, and Nightwing as the dude Wally sometimes gushes about. No he does not know they're one and the same.

In his Robin days, when Bruce revealed his identity, he asked Dick if he wanted his identity to be revealed too. The answer was a firm no thank you.

When Dick was asked if he was Robin, he pinned the asker with a deadpan look and a, "do you really think Bruce would let his own kid go out in that costume? The best I'm allowed to do is man the comms."

Most of the JLA have no idea where Robin came from and are too afraid to ask.

Dick thinks that everyone who needs to know who he is already does—he has his own friends, thank you very much, he doesn't need his dad's friends getting in his business.

So anyway JLA goes to Bludhaven to recruit Nightwing. Dick looks Oliver dead in the eyes, calls him Uncle Ollie, and tells them in no uncertain terms to get the fuck out of his city.

Oliver goes pale, and once they get to the Watchtower, pulls Batman away like "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK BRUCE IS THAT DICKIE???"

"He's going through his rebellious phase."

"IN FUCKING BLUDHAVEN? BRUCE I SWEAR TO GOD GO TALK TO YOUR KID OR I'M SIGNING HIS ADOPTION PAPERS MYSELF."

Bruce knows Dick would agree if only to piss him off so he drafts a hand-written letter and sends it. It's basically him apologizing and begging Dick to even consider visiting and to also not let Oliver adopt him because Bruce has had the papers filled for almost a decade now if Dick wants that?

Dick thinks it's the funniest shit and agrees to come home for holidays and a weekend a month if Bruce is civil so he's in Gotham when Bruce comes home with Jason.

Dick loves Jason immediately and demands Jason’s allowed to visit him one weekend a month.

Jason outright preens under Dick's attention so Bruce can't say no without looking like an asshole.

Dick gives Jason Robin after a few months, and the JLA are puzzled to see a new kid wearing the Robin suit.

"Who are you?"

The new Robin gives them a blank look. "Nonya fuckin' business."

Oliver's biting back laughter because that's the same little kid that begged him to read Pride and Prejudice to him when he spent the night in Star.

They ask Dick if Robin is his new little brother.

Dick looks at them with his age-old deadpan "you're an idiot" look. "Even if Bruce was negligent enough to let him be Robin, do you think I'd let him?"

Tim's even WORSE. Jason doesn't die or anything—he just feels his new ten-year-old genius little brother should be Robin with him and Dick agrees.

I can't emphasize how little control Bruce has over Jason and Tim because they just run to Babs or Dick when he's being annoying.

Tim showed up saying he wants to live with them because his parents won't notice and he knows Batman's identity and hasn't told anyone.

Dick and Jason decide to keep him right then and there.

Tim's quiet, wide-eyed, pale and incredibly small. Half of the JLA think they're hallucinating this new kid because he's literally just a little shadow.

Batman, Nightwing and Robin the elder only acknowledge him directly in soft tones or to direct him, and he never answers verbally—only nods.

Clark and Diana, who know full well that it's Tim under the mask because they were told once it happened, "Hey, is Batman your dad?"

The new Robin stares up at them with creepy white lenses. "He picked me off the streets."

They've learnt not to ask Dick. Jason doesn't answer them. Tim looks like a frail Victorian child and they're scared to ask.

It doesn't help that Tim redesigned the Robin costume so it has pants and the colors are a bit more muted. He disappears for six months (Lady Shiva) and comes back scarily efficient with a bo staff (one that has fucking retractable blades on each end)

Cass is a wraith of a child; small, skinny, never talks, silent footsteps.

Black Bat shows up on patrols sometimes, when she feels like it. The JLA are half sure she's an urban legend.

They don't even bother asking whether Cass is Black Bat.

Oliver's mildly frightened of her, but Cass adores Dinah and barely looks his way so they get along fine.

Dick's endlessly amused by all of this, and has never been happier to have siblings.

Bruce is honestly just happy to have his family together and in one place.