Black and White and Read All Over

drawing is fun!

inking is hard!

i understand the logic behind people leaving fanfiction reviews trying to get you to buy their fanart or whatever. "give me money" is a pretty easy thought process to figure out.

i cannot for the life of me figure out the thought process behind these latest "reviews", though. an anonymous someone has taken some political thoughts and a piece of seven-year-old Worm fanfiction, thrown them into a blender, and left the fragments as reviews on a story that i stopped updating in 2019. it's baffling. i keep thinking about it like i'm a cat using its entire brain cell to figure out the secrets of the universe (or at least the secrets specifically related to popping the top off of the food container).

why would you leave such a strange thing in such a forgettable place? what purpose does this serve? if this is a bot, how and why was it instructed to create this bizarre mix of words and apply it to multiple chapters of an ancient story over multiple days?

i come bearing gifts! you always wanted a twenty-year-old story, freshly polished, with maybe a new chapter or two, right?

Homesick

rated T, Humor/Comedy

The sequel to 'Home Sweet Home'. The lairs are destroyed, there's a trio of women out for blood, and the Riddler's in Arkham. What's a henchgirl to do?

they keep saying that if you see repeating numbers it's your guardian angels or whatever trying to pass you a message

what does it mean when eagles have the same names as your ocs

and then they have babies

(but maybe read my story first. y'know. if you're into that kind of thing!)

The Shadow Knows

Rated T, Humor/Mystery/Romance, Completed

Chapter 7: Insomnia

“No funny business, Ed,” the older cop warned, tugging on the handcuff chain again.

“Funny business? You must have me confused with somebody else,” the mysterious Ed said haughtily. “I...am the Riddler,” he intoned, as if the sound of the words would make everyone present realize that they'd made a terrible mistake in arresting what was very clearly a sane and well-adjusted kind of guy that just happened to have gone swimming in this season's latest and most fashionable mix of mechanical lubricants."

"i went to college! i'm forty-eight years old! what am i doing?"

let us indulge in chapter six, wherein the riddler and the shadow spend some quality time together that definitely goes exactly according to eddie's carefully laid plans!

The Shadow Knows

Rated T, Humor/Mystery/Romance

Chapter 6: Sport

"The Shadow rose to her feet, brushing a small cloud of dust out of her gray bodysuit. Her eyes, silver-blue, twinkled at him above her half-mask.

Traditionally, dates are started off with an offering of flowers, or a meaningful little gift, or at the very least some kind words.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eddie greeted, somewhat less romantically than he might have hoped."

(staying up until 2 AM to write every night is a fantastic idea that has no downsides whatsoever)

time for chapter five, in which flamingo-shaped straws are surprisingly useful!

The Shadow Knows

Rated T, Humor/Mystery/Romance

Chapter 5: Lies

"He liked things as they were, this odd little exchange of trinkets accompanied with some light breaking and entering. Asking her on a date seemed...too personal, maybe? If you usually waited three days between stating your interest in someone and actually calling them, how long did you wait between your first and...he counted...eighth minor break-in to actually pose the question of dating?

And she was hiding who she was - he still didn't even know her real name - so what if she was hiding everything, what if she was lying about everything and participating in their strange little game just out of curiosity or boredom and she wasn't actually interested in him at all? What if he'd had a crush on what was essentially his own imagination the whole time?"

(also eddie canonically naming his henchgirl echo is one of the funniest things that i have ever heard. eddie, my dude, you are supposed to see narcissus as a cautionary tale, not an end-goal!)

The Shadow Knows

Rated T, Humor/Mystery

Chapter 4: Ego

“Did they?” The Shadow tilted her head playfully. “Are you sure they weren't narcissus?”

Oh-ho. Eddie was no stranger to random plant trivia, which was one side effect of spending so many of his waking hours at Arkham locked in a rec room with Poison Ivy. Daffodils were, in fact, also known as narcissus, which meant that - wait, was she calling him narcissistic? He might have been offended if he wasn't the type of person who would name his over-amorous henchgirls Echo every now and again."

The Shadow Knows

Rated T, Humor/Mystery

Chapter 3: Stalking