» : Jason does not remember death, per se.However he sometimes dreams of...

_{Jason does not remember death, per se.}

_{However he sometimes dreams of the blurred moments preceding it— the copper taste invading his mouth, the throbbing pain in his eye, the cold brush of his mother’s finger tips leaving his shoulders as she leans him against the crate. Sometimes the panicked tone of her voice (“It’s locked! The Jocker locked us in here!”) reverberates around his skull as he wakes up. And sometimes he wakes up with the mocking hot pink of the digital clock’s numbers burned into his vision, watches them turn from one to zero as he opens his eyes and rubs sleep away with the back of his hands.}

_{But Jason doesn’t really remember dying.}

_{It’s funny the way his dreams play off of each other from night to night, the way he falls back asleep that night with the same hot pink numbers of the morning once again reentering his vision, and how, pushed into the dream world once more, he finds the same numbers now etched into the vivid darkness of a coffin.   Sometimes he wakes up right away just from that, gasping for breath with his arms flailing around in the sweaty air of Gotham city.}

_{Death is a deceptive thing, he guesses.}

Speedwritten Part 14. How did this even happen?! O_O

mgnemesi:

Getting to the kitchen is, admittedly, a bit of a feat - what with Richie stretching from his cradle within Jason’s arms and clinging onto Damian’s hair as though it were a pony’s bridle - but they make it safely down the stairs and across the hall to the cosy, if overtly huge, kitchen.
As soon as Jason manages to pry Richie’s little fist from his hair, Damian bolts to take a seat. He hunches on his stool like a bird of prey, shoulders up and eyes trained darkly on Jason, but refrains from any sort of comment.
Smile dropping, shoulders sagging, Jason hovers uncertainly on the door for a moment or two, looking very much like someone who’s been hit in the face by an invisible wall.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! 

 I love this verse ;-; 

tehlawr:

when you’re reading a really long fic and you finally get to the sex

wantstobelieve:

As he entered the clock tower and saw the trail of dark blood leading up the stairwell, Thor suddenly thought about cats.

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» This fanfic. THIS FUCKING FANFIC

I AM A MESS. I CAN’T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME I SOBBED SO HARD DURIN FANFIC. OH GOD. I NEED A BREAK NOW. 

» collecting stamps from nowhere: downtothelastbullet: tywinning asked you: 2012-08-09 03:37 As a...

stannisbaratheon:

downtothelastbullet:

tywinning asked you:
2012-08-09 03:37

As a professor, may I ask you what you think about fanfiction?

I think fanfiction is literature and literature, for the most part, is fanfiction, and that anyone that dismisses it simply on the grounds that it’s derivative knows fuck-all about literature and needs to get the hell off my lawn.

Most of the history of Western literature (and probably much of non-Western literature, but I can’t speak to that) is adapted or appropriated from something else.  Homer wrote historyfic and Virgil wrote Homerfic and Dante wrote Virgilfic (where he makes himself a character andwrites himself hanging out with Homer and Virgil and they’re like “OMG Dante you’re so cool.”  He was the original Gary Stu).  Milton wrote Bible fanfic, and everyone and their mom spent the Middle Ages writing King Arthur fanfic.  In the sixteenth century you and another dude could translate the same Petrarchan sonnet and somehow have it count as two separate poems, and no one gave a fuck.  Shakespeare doesn’t have a single original plot—although much of it would be more rightly termed RPF—and then John Fletcher and Mary Cowden Clarke and Gloria Naylor and Jane Smiley and Stephen Sondheim wrote Shakespeare fanfic.  Guys like Pope and Dryden took old narratives and rewrote them to make fun of people they didn’t like, because the eighteenth century was basically high school.  And Spenser!  Don’t even get me started on Spenser.

Here’s what fanfic authors/fans need to remember when anyone gives them shit: the idea that originality is somehow a good thing, an innately preferable thing, is a completely modern notion.  Until about three hundred years ago, a good writer, by and large, was someone who could take a tried-and-true story and make it even more awesome.  (If you want to sound fancy, the technical term is imitatio.)  People were like, why would I wanna read something about some dude I’ve never heard of?  There’s a new Sir Gawain story out, man!  (As to when and how that changed, I tend to blame Daniel Defoe, or the Modernists, or reality television, depending on my mood.)

I also find fanfic fascinating because it takes all the barriers that keep people from professional authorship—barriers that have weakened over the centuries but are nevertheless still very real—and blows right past them. Producing literature, much less circulating it, was something that was well nigh impossible for the vast majority of people for most of human history.  First you had to live in a culture where people thought it was acceptable for you to even want to be literate in the first place.  And then you had to find someone who could teach you how to read and write (the two didn’t necessarily go together).  And you needed sufficient leisure time to learn.  And be able to afford books, or at least be friends with someone rich enough to own books who would lend them to you.  Good writers are usually well-read and professional writing is a full-time job, so you needed a lot of books, and a lot of leisure time both for reading and writing.  And then you had to be in a high enough social position that someone would take you seriously and want to read your work—to have access to circulation/publication in addition to education and leisure time.  A very tiny percentage of the population fit those parameters (in England, which is the only place I can speak of with some authority, that meant from 500-1000 A.D.: monks; 1000-1500: aristocratic men and the very occasional aristocratic woman; 1500-1800: aristocratic men, some middle-class men, a few aristocratic women; 1800-on, some middle-class women as well). 

What’s amazing is how many people who didn’t fit those parameters kept writing in spite of the constant message they got from society that no one cared about what they had to say, writing letters and diaries and stories and poems that often weren’t discovered until hundreds of years later.  Humans have an urge to express themselves, to tell stories, and fanfic lets them.  If you’ve got access to a computer and an hour or two to while away of an evening, you can create something that people will see and respond to instantly, with a built-in community of people who care about what you have to say.

I do write the occasional fic; I wish I had the time and mental energy to write more.  I’ll admit I don’t read a lot of fic these days because most of it is not—and I know how snobbish this sounds—particularly well-written.  That doesn’t mean it’s “not good”—there are a lot of reasons people read fic and not all of them have to do with wanting to read finely crafted prose.  That’s why fic is awesome—it creates a place for all kinds of storytelling.  But for me personally, now that my job entails reading about 1500 pages of undergraduate writing per year, when I have time to read for enjoyment I want it to be by someone who really knows what they’re doing.  There’s tons of high-quality fic, of course, but I no longer have the time and patience to go searching for it that I had ten years ago. 

But whether I’m reading it or not, I love that fanfiction exists.  Because without people doing what fanfiction writers do, literature wouldn’t exist.  (And then I’d be out of a job and, frankly, I don’t know how to do anything else.)

» It's Only the End if You Want it to Be: Notes for Batfam fanfiction writers:

luanna255:

(Frankly, some canon writers could stand to keep these in mind, too.)

(Frankly, some canon writers could stand to keep these in mind, too.)

1) Jason threatening to kill other Batfamily members should be used sparingly, and having him attempt to kill other Batfam members should be deployed withextreme, extreme caution. Jason will react to other Batfam members with open hostility and large amounts of snark, but he pretty much only goes after the bad guys (contrary to what BftC seems to think), and he’s not really one for making death threats every time he opens his mouth. He’s not Damian.

2) Stephanie is not all sunshine and joy. The girl has a large amount of ‘tude, too. She’s not Pollyanna. She has a temper, she won’t hesitate to tell off people who deserve it, and she has a cynical side, too. This is a girl who’s been through a lot, who lost her innocence pretty early on, and although she’s still among the most optimistic of the Bats (her and Dick), that’s not all there is to her.

3) Babs and Tim are not “the smart ones” to the exclusion of all the other Batkids. Yes, Babs and Tim are geniuses, and yes, they are probably the most cerebral and logical ones. But it’s important to remember that the other Batkids are all intelligent in their own ways, too. Jason isn’t just “the angry one” - he’s also incredibly cunning and resourceful. He knows what he’s doing. Dick was the detective prodigy long before Tim came along, and he’s arguably has the best leadership skills in the DCU. Damian isn’t just a stab-happy brat, he’s clearlyinherited his father’s brains. Playing up the emotion vs. logic contrast between Dick and Tim or Babs and Steph is great - as long as you don’t start making the other Batkids stupid or incompetent simply because they’re around Babs or Tim. ALL of the Batkids are smart.

4) Jason and Bruce did not spend the entirety of Jason’s Robin tenure arguing. Bruce could actually be quite sweet and supportive with Jason, and for his part Jason was generally happy and enthusiastic about being Robin (and had an amazing ability to make Bruce smile, too, right from the very beginning). Jason could be more violent and angry than Dick, it’s true, but if you focus too much on how he was angry and ‘dooooomed’ from the beginning, you’re not accurately portraying him or his relationship with Bruce.

5) Babs does not need to have a snarky comeback to every single sentence out of Dick’s mouth. Yes, she loves to tease him, but she’s equally likely to just be openly affectionate (even when he gives her an opening to mess with him). If Dick says “Hi, it’s nice to see you”, you really can just have Babs say “I’m glad to see you, too” without twelve different sarcastic comments. Babs loves to snark, but she’s also an incredibly warm and caring person, too. (It’s also worth noting that Babs doesn’t always have the upper hand in their relationship, either. She knocks Dick off his feet like no one else does - literally and metaphorically - but Dick is probably the only one who can, to use Dinah’s phrase, make “the great Oracle embarrassed like a little schoolgirl”.)

6) Cass is a woman of few words, but she is neither cold nor humorless. She’s actually incredibly sweet, and she’s perfectly willing to joke around and laugh. (Heck, she can even troll with the best of them!) Characterizing Cass as cold or emotionless is actually about as far from her true personality as you can get. Being badass is NOT the same thing as having no emotions. Similarly, if you write Tim as some kind of super-serious mini-Bruce (not that Bruce is as humorless as many writers portray him, either), you’re not really understanding him. Tim is basically a gigantic dork who loves joking around with the people he loves and has an absolutely ridiculous sense of humor. (Oh, and he’s not neat all the time, either.)

7) Catchphrases should be used sparingly, and are not substitutes for genuine personality. Damian does not tack “-tt-” onto every sentence out of his mouth. Babs is unlikely refer to Dick as “Hunk Wonder” or “Short-Pants” more than a few times in one conversation. Steph does not constantly make jokes about waffles and the color eggplant. All of these things can be mixed into dialogue here and there to good effect. But if you start relying on them too much, especially to elevate otherwise flat characterization, it comes across as unrealistic and irritating. Your characterization should speak for itself. Catchphrases, nicknames, and signature jokes are there to enhance characterization - they do not, on their own, comprise it.

8) Dick is a flirt, but he doesn’t think about sex 24/7, nor is he going to want to sleep with every attractive person he meets. He has relationship ethics, and when he does have casual flings, it’s not something he feels comfortable with. Nor is he likely to just take off his clothes in public without some kind of in-story justification for it. Dick has an outgoing personality, and he is a sexual character, but taking these qualities to an extreme and writing him as some kind of exhibitionist sex maniac is completely out-of-character. (It’s also worth noting that while he is a flirt, he isn’t crass about it. He uses the adjectives ‘lovely’ and ‘wonderful’ to describe Kory in skimpy bikinis. Need I say more?)

9) This is the most important one: Bruce is neither a terrible person nor an abusive father. Is he emotionally distant sometimes? Yes, absolutely. Is he too hard on his kids at times? Yes, that too. But he’s also often warm, supportive, and extremelyloving towards his children. He doesn’t always expect perfection, and even though sometimes his standards are too high, there are just as many moments where he’s sensitive and understanding when his kids mess up (or think they’ve messed up). Bottom line is, he loves his kids deeply, and he tries to be the best father he can. And he’s a good person. He makes mistakes - terrible mistakes, sometimes - but he can be a really wonderful father at times, too. (And he’s not humorless either!)

Anyone care to add your own?

holywatered:

when you think about it fanfiction is actually amazing

there are thousands of brilliantly written novel-length stories kids wrote from their own brains about characters and shows/books/movies they love all twined into the internet and other kids read these 50k+ stories in their own time and invest themselves in it

nobody’s being paid to write it and nobody’s being told to read it, people do it because they legitimately enjoy it

that is just kind of amazing

If someone asks you, I’m crazy

mgnemesi:

“You have heart,” Loki tells him, voice low and crooning. Deliberate. This man is a promising one.

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this is a jason and loki fic. 

a Jason

and

Loki fic.

JASON AND LOKI

I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO SAW THE SIMILARITY IN THEIR STORIES. SWEET JESUS.